Legend Management Bureau Chapter 432

[ … words ]

Time never expected that, compared to himself, the Du Yu before him was a complete and utter lunatic.

“Du Yu! What the hell are you plotting?!” Time demanded. “Did you intentionally become ‘Time’?!”

“That’s right.” Du Yu nodded. “I guessed long ago that you were another version of me, and I also figured out that I couldn’t escape this endless loop no matter what. But what could I do? To me, you are an absolute ‘God.’ Even though you can’t predict my actions, you can know everything about me. And the words you spoke were exactly as I imagined—if there was even a single thing about me that left you dissatisfied, you would abandon me and choose the next generation’s Du Yu. After all, you are like an oversized Legend Management Bureau, capable of seeing everything across all timelines.”

Time was stunned. He was “Time,” the entity who knew everything, yet he could never figure out what the man in front of him was thinking.

“Since when… did you know?”

“If I told you, you might not believe me,” Du Yu smiled.

“Could it have been when you first saw me?!” Time exclaimed.

“No,” Du Yu sneered. “It was when the Gorgon became a Great Pivot and appeared.”

“Wh—” Hearing Du Yu’s words, Time stumbled backward three steps in sheer shock. “When the Gorgon Medusa appeared… you didn’t even know of the Saint’s existence! How could you have possibly guessed my existence?! What kind of joke are you playing?! Are you bluffing?!”

“What did you say?!”

Exposing one cold eye through his long hair, Du Yu looked at his counterpart and spoke, “I saved the Gorgon in the Greek Divine Realm, so she survived, killed all the divine lords in retaliation, became the ruler of the Greek realm, and lived until now. It all sounds perfectly reasonable.”

Time swallowed hard, unable to speak.

“But you made a massive mistake,” Du Yu said. “If the Gorgon was the ruler of the Greek Divine Realm, then Ramla, the God of Legends, couldn’t possibly exist. Ramla wouldn’t have been able to come to the present to have some ‘international friendly exchange’ with me. This should have been a monumental paradox generating countless Great Pivots. Yet, somehow, someone secretly smoothed out the interconnected karma of this paradox for me, completely isolating the cause and effect. Such a colossal event miraculously produced only one Great Pivot: Medusa. Furthermore, Ramla had left Medusa to die back then; she couldn’t possibly have survived to the present. Yet, how strange, the ‘exchange meeting’ was still happening. Everyone told me it was ‘Time’ repairing its own existence.”

“You…”

“But why would ‘Time’ repair this legend for me?” Du Yu asked with a smile. “This was a legend that impacted an entire divine realm. If ‘Time’ could self-repair a legend of that magnitude, then what is the purpose of the Legend Management Bureau’s existence? Why would I be needed to fix those legends below the Super-A grade? This means… if I caused a deviation in a legend, someone would clean up my mess. But if others caused it, they wouldn’t get the same treatment. I am special.”

“S-so what?”

“So I actively courted death.” Du Yu chuckled endlessly, laughing until a chill crept into Time’s heart. “I gave up on the relatively reliable Zhan Qisheng, Qu Xi, and Ying Ning. Instead, I brought the eccentric Medusa and a troublemaker, Shiranui Asuka, to wreak havoc in the Legend of the White Snake. I summoned two hundred thousand celestial soldiers to slaughter the shrimp soldiers and crab generals. I took the initiative to propose killing Xu Xian. I watched helplessly as Bai Suzhen escaped from beneath Leifeng Pagoda. I drove the legend toward an utterly impossible conclusion. Yet, what was the result? I won the gamble again.”

Time fell silent.

“Someone fixed that legend for me,” Du Yu laughed loudly. “Haha! It’s simply too amusing! You tampered with the timeline again, making Xu Xuan the protagonist. I have to admit, your repairing abilities are formidable, leaving no flaws for most people to see… But a bold thought sprouted in my mind… ‘Time’ seemed to possess its own consciousness. It was repairing things on my behalf. If my guess was right, it wanted to keep Medusa alive.”

“However, I also have my moments of failure,” Du Yu continued muttering to himself. “I didn’t expect the Saint to exist in this world. So for a very long time, I pondered the relationship between the Saint and Time. But I quickly realized that you two couldn’t possibly be the same person. After all, the Saint wanted to kill me, while Time wanted to protect me. This made things even more interesting. Why did Time want to protect me?”

Time’s lips moved slightly as he stared at Du Yu in disbelief. “You truly are a lunatic… What kind of monster did the ‘Creator’ forge…”

“Qu Xi’s paradox is your masterpiece too, isn’t it?” Du Yu sneered. “She clearly experienced different lives, yet met the exact same ending and died from the exact same cause. It’s truly brilliant. But the same situation never happened to the protagonists of other legends. This means you were intentionally gathering specific people around me.”

“After piecing together all these bold theories, I finally met you, Time… So, I put on a great show for you.” Du Yu walked forward step by step. “Since you are ‘Time’, possessing the immense power to fix everything, I naturally couldn’t let you see through me. I molded myself into a fool, yet in my heart, I was calculating your intentions. You can’t move, you can’t leave. You are the ‘Time’ trapped in this cave. You kept repairing legends for me, keeping me alive. So, I naturally deduced your objective—you wanted me to replace you.”

“You… you actually knew everything…”

“Next came Nuwa Repairs the Sky, Gonggong Smashing the Mountain, and the Great War. These were all methods I used to slowly figure out your intentions… Think about it carefully, do you still not understand? Why did everyone tell me to avoid those two legends, yet I insisted on entering them? Why did so many people try to stop me, yet I was absolutely determined to kill Mahakala? Why did I chase He Suoyi through the rifts of time? Why was I willing to sit quietly and watch the illusions you displayed?” Du Yu suddenly tilted his head back and burst into boisterous laughter—

“It’s because I wanted to become ‘Time’!!”

Time froze, as if struck by a bolt of lightning from a clear sky.

“And the root cause of all this was because you panicked! Time! You once exposed a massive flaw to me! Even if I hadn’t found perfect evidence in Qu Xi, your actions toward that person made me instantly understand everything! That was the first time you let me ‘catch’ you.”

“A flaw…” Time trembled slightly. “You mean… Great Emperor Fuxi…”

“Hahahahaha!” Du Yu clapped his hands while laughing. “It seems you still remember! Yes, Great Emperor Fuxi!”

Time squeezed out a bitter smile. “Because I helped you repair Great Emperor Fuxi’s threads ‘in advance’, you accurately caught onto that detail…”

“Exactly. You thought I had gone mad and would directly kill the compromised Fuxi in the legend. You didn’t expect me to suddenly ask Sister Qianqiu, ‘Should Fuxi die?’… And as a result, Sister Qianqiu actually told me that Fuxi indeed deserved to die right there.” Du Yu suppressed his smile, looking at the panic-stricken Time. “That was Great Emperor Fuxi! Even if something went wrong with him in this legend, he still had to invent the Taiji Bagua and create the Wordless Heavenly Book. Yet, Sister Qianqiu told me his life should naturally end right there… Sister Qianqiu couldn’t possibly be a mole. Her memories could only have been tampered with. How hilarious, Time. I hadn’t even done the deed yet, but you made everything logical in advance. Why were you in such a rush?!”

“You…” Time still found it somewhat unbelievable. “Even if I was a bit hasty, you shouldn’t have known Fuxi’s story… In the past, you always…”

“In the past?” Du Yu sneered. “Liu Shan feigned foolishness to meet a peaceful end, while I feigned foolishness to catch the mastermind. What’s wrong with that? The more foolish I acted, the bigger your flaws became! Ever since Qu Xi warned me during the ‘Izanagi’ incident, I secretly used my mobile phone to thoroughly memorize the scripts in advance every single time. Use your three hundred and thirty thousand-year-old brain to think about it! If I didn’t know the legend scripts, how could I bravely risk my life again and again without hesitation? You thought everything I did in the legends was merely acting on a whim, never realizing that those were choices born from continuous, deep deliberation.”

Just a few minutes ago, Time believed he had everything under control, only for his reality to be instantly overturned by the Du Yu standing before him.

“But… you aren’t completely useless either,” Du Yu said with a smile. “I truly didn’t expect there to be so many versions of me in this world, so I am very glad. Fortunately, I became ‘Time’. If I want to understand a thing, I must step into it.”

“Then what exactly… are you gambling on?”

Du Yu extended a wizened finger, tapped his own head, and spoke to Time with a solemn expression:

“I am gambling the lives of all the Du Yus across space and time, in a bold attempt to rid this world of ‘Time’ forever.”