Chapter 84 – This Shall Be the Boundary

Lin Wei was dreaming.

First, it was the continuation of the room filled with hourglasses, spinning endlessly, making him feel extremely irritated.

He felt like he had figured something out before falling asleep, but now he couldn’t recall it no matter how hard he tried—this made him very anxious, and he looked toward Duan Yu, who had been by his side, for help.

But that guy just shook his head, acting aloof and indifferent, which made him feel even more wronged.

For some reason, he found himself back at the railing on the top floor, where Adrishig was mysteriously asking for information about the goddess.

Everything made him uncomfortable. He drifted in and out of the dream for who knows how long, desperately trying to escape. With a forceful struggle, he finally broke free from the dark nightmare and felt the soft touch of the blanket wrapped around him.

A cat’s paw reached out, gently pressing against his cheek, as if checking whether its owner was still alive.

The kitten’s fur was snow-white, almost blending into the blanket—it seemed to have gained a bit of weight, Lin Wei thought, still half-asleep.

In the next moment, the kitten was picked up by a slender, elegant hand—it was Duan Yu, who was sitting by the bed.

Lin Wei remembered how infuriating this guy had been in his dream, so he pulled the blanket over his head and kicked around under the covers in frustration and anxiety.

When he finally calmed down, he felt the blanket being lifted with a gentle but firm force.

—Duan Yu had pulled him out from under the covers.

“What’s wrong?” The mage’s cool hand touched his forehead.

“It’s nothing… just a bad dream.” Lin Wei mumbled, regaining a bit of clarity.

Duan Yu smoothed out his messy hair and gave a faint smile. The smile was fleeting, but a hint of it lingered in his eyes, softening his brows and the corners of his eyes. It gave him a whole new aura, as if he were bathed in gentle starlight, leaving Lin Wei momentarily stunned.

“You’ve been asleep for two days,” Duan Yu said. “The barrier is about to collapse.”

Lin Wei wanted to sit up and look out the window, but he had slept so deeply that his body felt weak and he couldn’t muster the strength—nor did he particularly want to. In the end, Duan Yu had to help him up.

“Has Adrishig not returned yet?”

“No.”

The barrier outside was clearly on the verge of breaking, and many powerful magical beasts had already crossed it, now facing off against the mages.

As Qiu Na had said, the combat strength of the Astrology Tower was limited—unlike the battle-hardened academy, this place was mostly inhabited by scholars of the magical world, engrossed in compiling and revising texts, organizing magical achievements, studying celestial phenomena, and making prophecies. When it came to actual combat, only those who mastered the Great Prophecy and those who had been offensive mages before joining the tower could effectively fight. The rest could only pray to the stars.

“Were you with me the whole time?” Lin Wei asked.

“No,” the mage answered honestly. “Haitie and I took turns.”

—The Astrology Tower wouldn’t let go of even a single usable combatant. Even the academy’s headmaster, Sylvester, who had flown here to demand an explanation for the death of his student, had to stay and help.

Sylvester’s white robe, symbolizing an Archmage, was very conspicuous. His abilities were no longer limited to elemental magic—his research into spatial laws had made him a true Space Mage. Though he couldn’t transport himself to another place, he could throw enemies into spatial rifts from which they would never return!

Qiu Na had set a blazing sea of fire behind the barrier and in front of the Star Tower, while Adele’s summoning spells had erected a ferocious web of vines behind the flames, ready for the barrier’s complete collapse.

Lin Wei put on his robe, but he still felt cold. He rummaged through his things and found the cloak that the thoughtful Duchess had prepared for him before they parted—it had a soft black fur lining and a silver-violet trim around the collar.

He pulled on his boots, adjusted the collar, and walked to the window, saying to Duan Yu, “Let’s go.”

The two didn’t take the spiral staircase but instead opened the window and flew out.

At one point during their flight, the already fragile barrier trembled, and the roars of the beasts suddenly amplified many times over. Everyone froze for a moment, silently looking up at the sky as if hearing the sound of the massive barrier shattering.

Once this barrier fell, the beast tide would pass through the frozen plains, cross the Elander Valley, and enter the continent unchecked.

Sylvester roared, “Snap out of it!” and shot out two massive spatial rifts, sealing off the open area and forcing the beast tide toward the sea of fire and the web of vines. The beast tide surged like a gray flood, while the mages retreated behind the flames. They were like tiny pebbles behind a mud dam in a river about to be overwhelmed by a flood.

Lin Wei, however, walked forward calmly and sighed, “Do you think he really can see the past and the future—why does everything he predicts come true?”

Duan Yu replied, “Perhaps because he’s too intelligent.”

“That’s right…” Lin Wei looked up at the sky, where fine snowflakes had begun to fall. “Time always inspires awe, and seeing through it makes people afraid.”

Even if someone could use powerful magic to destroy the entire world, it wouldn’t evoke the same sense of fear—because time was simply too vast and incomprehensible.

Behind him, a faint contract seal materialized, its light flickering and forming complex, indecipherable patterns that gradually expanded.

In the air before him, an invisible ripple carried a mysterious and captivating power.

Lin Wei looked at the crimson sea of fire burning in the snow, the brown smoke pillars reaching into the celestial vault, and calmly spoke a sentence in the complex Common Language of the Continent.

“…This shall be the boundary.”

God said, let there be light.

At the moment when the horde of beasts descended like a dark cloud, a crack seemed to open in the layers of clouds, and heavenly light poured down. A radiant barrier suddenly took form.

Silence.

As if completely oblivious to the surprised gazes of the mages, Lin Wei walked past them, through the sea of fire. With each step he took, the barrier advanced, eventually pushing it back to the original entrance of the Mozier Canyon.

Some of the faster magical beasts were left inside the barrier, howling and lunging forward, only to be swiftly slain.

Haitie watched the figures of the two through the flames, her gaze filled with confusion.

It had only been a few days since they last met, yet one of her companions had reached the level of an Archmage, while the other…

“Mother,” she said to Qiu Na, “is that the Great Prophecy?”

“Yes,” Qiu Na replied, deeply gazing at the backs of the two. “But it’s a bit different.”

“I shouldn’t have doubted Teacher,” she laughed at herself. “He said someone would hold up the barrier, and now someone has—but why? Why does he know our Great Prophecy? He’s only just…”

She knew how profound the Great Prophecy was, how much effort it took to casually speak something into existence—she had spent years studying day and night, even surpassing the incredibly talented Adele, yet she had only just reached the level of this young man.

Nearby, Archmage Sylvester sighed, though his gaze was fixed on Duan Yu—the two of them shared a complex sense of camaraderie.

“Young people are truly remarkable…” The slightly plump and gentle headmaster smiled with a sigh.

The battle stabilized once more, and by the evening, when Lin Wei returned to his room, he finally spoke about his “Great Prophecy.”

“Adrishig said he used the time of two Tower Masters to create a flawless law for the hourglass room—but you can only believe half of what he says. In reality, he used that time to create the Great Prophecy!” Lin Wei leaned against the fireplace, looking sullen. “The core of the Great Prophecy is to construct a self-consistent law within a manageable scope. Within that scope, the creator of the law becomes the Creator God, making words come true.”

“But what he said about the hourglasses could only tell me this much. I think he did it on purpose! I only understood the principle of the Great Prophecy, but I’m completely clueless about how to construct a law—I can only imagine, and I happened to think of the Book of Contracts, which is related to the greatest law—the Rules.”

He truly had no other path to take, so he had to awkwardly grasp the subtle connection between the Great Prophecy and the Book of Contracts, forcibly combining the two.

He asked the Rules to open a small gap, allowing him to place his own law.

—It was as if he had fused an auxiliary array onto a foundational array, and somehow, he had managed to carve out a viable path.

“If the goddess’s thoughts and Adrishig’s creation are both correct… I’m almost starting to believe that the Creator God truly exists.”

The “Rules” that this world followed were merely a grand law, and the being who established them could truly be called the “Will of Creation”—just like the hypothesis proposed at the beginning of the Book of Contracts.

“But I still don’t believe it.” Lin Wei suddenly laughed softly at this point.

Words like “fate” or “destiny”… nothing was more detestable than them, and acknowledging the existence of an omnipotent, all-determining “Creator God” only made him feel a vague sense of weariness—if that were the case, then his reincarnation would just be a fish floundering from one stagnant pool to a larger one.

That vague desire finally grew stronger, revealing its clear face.

“To find out if it’s a stagnant pool, that fish has to jump out of the water first,” he thought to himself.

“Besides, I’m not that stupid…” Lin Wei glanced at Duan Yu, quietly telling himself, “He’s so powerful, and I thought I’d never be able to beat him in my lifetime. Yet I managed to drag things out to the end with my barely passable strength and an army.”

“I want to know what really happened during the Dark Age, what those gods wanted to do, and even how this entire world came to be—though it’s a slim hope, it’s still worth having some ambition. My father taught me that from a young age.”

He wrestled with his thoughts, pulling himself out of his low spirits. With the support of that “ambition,” he now had a clear goal, and he had even managed to justify his previously unclear thoughts and actions—he felt quite satisfied, even proud, and his confidence grew a bit.

“Come on,” he said to the golden-haired mage, lifting his chin with a haughty expression. “Fending off the beast tide is boring. I want to fight you.”