The blackness was complete. Not the lack of light, but a deep, crushing nothing that bore down on all sides, and provided no resistance, no surface, no shape. Tang Yan was in it, or maybe he *was* it. There was no up, no down, no direction, just an infinite stretch of cold, uncaring nothing.
His body was… missing. He attempted to curl a hand, to move his weight, to sense the earth beneath his feet, but nothing. No limbs moved, no muscles contracted, no nerves detected sensation. It was as if he had dissolved, his bodily shape removed, and all that remained was his awareness drifting free in this endless, cold darkness. Panic, raw and primal, battered at the periphery of his mind, but he crushed it mercilessly. He was Tang Yan. He had died, fought gods, and crossed dimensions. This… this was nothing but a hurdle.
His senses were sealed, muffled by an impenetrable veil. There was no sound here, except for the singular presence that had accompanied him through so many tests and transmutations – the system.
A voice, lacking cadence or warmth, but somehow piercing the silence of the void, rang directly in his mind.
> System: "Host, welcome back."
*Back? * Tang Yan's thoughts, the only functioning part of him, stirred slowly. Back from where? The system's welcome was familiar, ordinary, but the context was completely foreign. The very last thing he recalled, the only thing he could grasp at in this formless blackness, was the whirling, disorienting sensation of entering the channel of time-space. He had prepared to come home, to step back into the present following his precisely planned excursion into the past.
But rather than the comforting feel of solid earth or shifting light, all he was met with was this… this emptiness.
> Tang Yan: "System… what happened? Why is everything black? Where… where am I?" He projected his thoughts, his questions, into the silent dark, directing them at the system's presence. There was a pause. Not a technical delay, but something that felt… hesitant. Tang Yan, intimately familiar with the system's usual efficiency and lack of emotional inflexion, felt it keenly. It was as though a breath was suspended, a pause in its otherwise perfect functioning.
Despite the lack of emotions in the system, there was a clear hint of embarrassment, a hesitation in how it answered his question.
> System: "Host, you were sent back to the distant past."
They were plain words, true words, but they were out of sync. He had *just* come from the past. Was this another journey? Had the channel broken down?
> System: "You… created a lot of trouble for yourself." *Trouble? * Tang Yan's non-existent brows knitted in the darkness. The tone of the system, as flat as it was, was weighted with something that chilled him more than the cold of the void. His thoughts reeled, struggling to recall his memories of the time-space channel, of the moments leading to this state. What in the world could he have done that would be *trouble*?
He had played by the book, carried out his mission in the past exactly as instructed by the system to fix the timeline and secure his future.
And yet, a significant portion of his memory felt… sealed off, out of reach, like a door slammed shut.
> System: "Don't worry. They won't connect it to you."
The instant he heard this half-hearted assurance, this bizarre defensive assertion by the system, Tang Yan's face, although hidden, became cold. *They?* Link *what* to him? The system was not dispelling his worry; it was affirming that there *was* something serious, something possibly harmful, that had happened. That not having full openness, trying to sidestep, was not on.
"Whatever it is… tell me," he commanded, his mind voice low and even, but with an unbeatable gravity, a tempered determination that had been forged through innumerable battles and impossible circumstances. Fear was something he could not afford, not now. Not when his world seemed so irrevocably shattered. "Say it all. I'm strong enough to take it."
The system appeared to hesitate once more, and this time, Tang Yan almost sensed something that sounded like a sigh, if such a thing were even conceivable in a non-corporeal being. It was a slight, nearly unnoticed change in the system's energy profile, a tiny fluctuation from its normal frequency, but to Tang Yan, whose senses were now utterly concentrated at this single point of connection, it was as distinct as a spoken voice.
> System: "Initially, once you travelled back in time for the first time, the sanctioned timeline correction, you chose to retain some parts of your former self. Your natural affinity towards elements, which was triggered when you spent time in the far past, your enhanced bond with the First Heaven, a power source you accessed, and more specifically, the martial soul rings you gained for both your original and new martial souls during that time. That was the plan. Your identity would be concealed; you would be seen as a new person in the current timeline, maybe an heir to your former self's mantle at best. The large butterfly effect, the birth of stronger enemies, was dependent only on you intentionally trying to reclaim your former mantle and its related power structures. That was the plan."
The system established the boundaries of his *first* trip, the one he'd knowingly taken and returned from. It was a complicated process, incorporating parts of a previous life onto his current one while keeping an independent personality. It made sense. It was manageable.
> System: "But once you successfully entered the time-space channel to return to your native time… something unexpected occurred."
Tang Yan was shocked, a shiver of discomfort in the space. A mistake? The channel of time-space had been supposed to be stable, controlled by the power of the system.
> System: "You weren't just sent to the remote past again… You were sent ahead *from there*, but still to the past compared to your current time."
Tang Yan's nonexistent students were constricted. *Forward into the past?* What idiocy was this? The words were in contradiction to each other, contorting logic into a Gordian knot. His intellect, keen and logical, attempted to unravel the system's strange assertion, but it faltered over the paradox inherent within. It was as if attempting to grasp smoke.
His tolerance, strained to the breaking point by the darkness, the insensitivity, and the system's obscure justifications, gave out. "Tell me with greater accuracy," he commanded, his inner voice becoming cold, laced with irritation and a building flood of something very like tyrannical order. He wanted information, not enigmas. He wanted the truth, unadorned and accurate.
The system appeared to sense the change in his tone, the flat expectation in his presence. Its next words dropped like iron stones into the emptiness, each one crashing with ruinous force.
> System: "You were teleported by mistake into Qian Daoliu and Tang Chen's time."
Tang Yan stood still. All thoughts stopped. *Qian Daoliu. Tang Chen.* The names rang out across the history of the Douluo Continent like peals of thunder. They were not mere figures from history; they were giants of legend, peaks of strength, people whose very existence had redefined their time and the world beyond. The time of the three supreme Douluo, an age of great power and struggle.
*That means…* His thoughts reeled, putting together the consequences. *I travelled within these hundred years?!* He had not only travelled back centuries; he had travelled back to a particular, wildly important era, an era in his experience from the history books, an era ruled by men whose power approached godhood. The enormity of that random arrival was overwhelming.
> System: "Some of the alterations happened within the Douluo Plane due to this second, unintentional trip. You are not yet aware of the particular nature of these alterations."
Tang Yan balled his non-existent fists, the imaginary sharp prick of nails in palms a gut reaction to recall. There would be changes, of course. Going into such an era, into contact with it, intentionally or unintentionally, would create ripples. But the wording of the system was unnerving. "Some changes." "Currently unaware."
"Tell me," he barked now, his tone constricted, all his concentration focused intently on the system. He had to know the difference between the initial, planned trip and this catastrophic second one. He had to know why *this* crash had resulted in "trouble" and "changes" when the first, controlled interference was to be hidden mostly.
The system, after another dramatic pause, a hesitation that said everything about the intricacy and maybe the regrettable quality of what it was about to say, went on:
> System: "The first time travel was approved and supervised by me. Your meddling was carefully orchestrated to fix paradoxes and stabilise the timeline with the leeway for you to acquire needed power. Your identity was supposed to be kept secret upon your return; the timeline was altered so your actions in that past would be explained differently, or simply glossed over. At best, the present you would be seen as an heir of your past self's power or legacy, not the same individual who had returned physically. Only if you sought actively to inherit your former mantle, to take the authority or power structures you previously had, would you encounter stiff, heightened resistance – the butterfly effect in the form of tougher enemies aware of your return."
Alright. That explained the first journey. It was a controlled insertion, a surgical attack on the timeline aimed at reducing paradox and fallout while maximising his profit. His identity was kept secret.
> System: "The second time travel… was an accident. A critical glitch happened during the time-space transition following your first mission. It wasn't sanctioned, it wasn't scheduled, and most importantly, the entire set of masking protocols of the system malfunctioned during the incident. Your actions on that rogue, second journey to the time of Qian Daoliu and Tang Chen have been forcibly incorporated into the altered timeline. They have not been smoothed out or blamed on another person. Their butterfly effects are unchecked by the original masking protocols."
The entire force of the system's words came crashing down on Tang Yan. An *accident*. A *glitch*. *Masking protocols failed.* What he had done in that tumultuous, spontaneous ride to the age of legends was *not* concealed. They were *part* of the timeline now. > System: "In simpler words… during the first time, your interference was concealed by the system's functions, and the timeline sees you, upon your return, as someone new, a consequence of the corrected history. During the second time, the accidental trip, the glitch meant there was no concealment. The timeline treats it as if the present you, *this* version of you, truly went to that specific past era and made changes, and the effects of those changes remain, imprinted on the present reality." Tang Yan took in a cold breath, a purely psychological response in the airless emptiness. The consequences were staggering, horrific.
His meticulously maintained distance from his past, his status as a new person in the corrected timeline, had been broken by an accident.
He hadn't merely gone to Qian Daoliu's and Tang Chen's time; *he* had been there, the 'he' that was now talking to the system, and whatever he had done, on purpose or by mistake, was now a point of no return, a cause with inexorable effects spreading forward.
"So the present I was to return to," he whispered, the understanding weighing like lead in his stomach, its icy future, one that I am ignorant of, a future that has been shifted by my inadvertent actions?"
> System: "Correct."
Silence fell once again, thicker than the emptiness itself. The weight of that awareness lay upon Tang Tang Yan's chest, a suffocating burden of unintended consequences. He had returned to repair the past, and in doing so, broken the future instead. His future. He was coming back into a world formed by things he could not recall causing, to meet challenges born from his untimely meddling. But, with a couple of breaths, breaths he didn't take but felt in the depth of his core self, he gradually released the tension that had wound up inside him. The shock at first, the frustration, the dread at the unseen future… he suppressed all of that. What use was there in brooding over it? The past, even the mistakenly changed past, was unchangeable now. The future, his reality, was already in place by those things. "So let it be," he grumbled, the words infused with a tired resignation, yet also a stubborn fortitude. He was Tang Yan. He learned to adjust. He survived. Whatever lay ahead, whatever had been altered, he would endure it. "What's done is done." The darkness lingered, bleak and infinite, but within it, a determination firmed, standing ready for a return to a world he could no longer completely understand, a world he had unintentionally remoulded.
Hello readers,
I'm not sure if I've shared everything before, but to be honest, this project started on a whim. I know many of you have expressed a desire to collaborate on various aspects. However, I want to make it clear that I currently have no budget to spend on any of my novels. If there are still interested friends willing to collaborate or work for free, please feel free to reach out to me through the comments. I apologize for not responding earlier, but I have been keeping track of your feedback. Thank you for your understanding!