"They set off. According to the plan, they were supposed to return before the brief polar summer ended. But summer passed, autumn passed... and there was no news. I used every method I could think of, even exchanged my alchemical instruments for the help of the Divination Master, conducting several long-distance divinations, only to receive vague and cold revelations: they entered that underground project and... never came out again."
The courtyard fell into a deathly silence, only the soft bubbling of the sauce in the clay pot could be heard, as if mourning this past event.
"I arranged everything here and set out for the ice field," Musa continued, his voice seemingly carrying the chill of Siberia, "I found that entrance, hidden deep within a glacial crevasse, cold and solid, like the silent mouth of a beast. I went in, relying on the concentrated food and refined Energy Potions I carried, searching inside for who knows how long. The place was larger than imagined, its structure completely defying logic, with cold concrete and rusted steel forming an endless maze. But I found nothing. No traces of their camp, no discarded supplies, not even a single familiar footprint. They seemed to have been completely swallowed by that cold darkness."
He raised his head, looking at Ian, his eyes naked with decades of accumulated pain and bewilderment. "Alive without a trace, dead without a body. Can you understand that feeling, Your Majesty? For someone used to creating with his hands and tasting reality with his palate, this void of unresolved loss is the cruelest torment."
The old man's voice was full of sighs.
Ian felt his throat tightening and nodded silently. He looked at the old man in front of him, who spent his time with the land and the kitchen, and could better understand the sense of void following the collapse of a reality built on the "concrete."
"So..." Ian spoke slowly, a thought cut through his mind like lightning, connecting all previous clues — Musa's unconventional use of time manipulation, his profound knowledge beyond the usual realm of culinary alchemy, the obsession hidden deep in his eyes all seemed to stem from this.
"Your research into time technology, even incorporating it into cooking, was never for the pursuit of extreme taste experience, but for... finding the truth behind their disappearance? You wanted to go back in time?" Ian asked what was on his mind, seeking confirmation from Musa.
Musa nodded calmly, picking up a small, intricately structured device made of copper and brass next to him, resembling both a pocket watch.
And a miniature distiller.
"Applying it to cooking, such as accelerating certain fermentation processes or letting the flavors of spices achieve optimal fusion through subtle changes in time flow, was merely a side practice and... a sort of diversion. It helped me understand the 'taste' and 'texture' of time. What I've truly been pursuing is time travel. I want to go back before they entered that place, or... at least to the time when they were still inside."
He confirmed Ian's speculation, but then, a bitter smile appeared on his face.
"Yes, I succeeded, to some extent. I created this 'Time Flavor Bottle,' essentially a small-scale Time Converter. More than once, I adjusted its scales to travel back in time. I returned to the days before Armani and Little Soma set off, having meals together in this courtyard."
"Returned to when they just arrived at the ice field, making hot soup in the tent to ward off the cold; and even... countless times followed them into that damn underground project."
The old man's voice was full of helplessness.
"Hmm?"
Ian's eyes widened.
Time travel!
This is an almost taboo domain that researchers in all fields dream of but dare not easily touch! This seemingly ordinary old farmer, in pursuit of love, actually touched the realm of the divine!
Note.
The other party is, at most, an elite-level wizard, the kind who could be instantly defeated by the four Hogwarts house heads, yet managed to achieve such things.
Love.
Truly a wondrous thing.
It can inspire limitless power in people.
Just as Ian marveled, the other's narration continued.
"However," Musa changed his tone, full of powerlessness, "the rules of time are like an insurmountable iron wall. I can't directly prevent them from going there."
"Every time I tried to do so, I encountered a powerful 'Corrective Force.' It might be that the meal I carefully prepared to persuade them accidentally spilled, or my words were interrupted by sudden wind or ice cracking sounds, and once, I almost caused a paradoxical turbulence, getting lost in the timeline by forcibly intervening."
"Time... does not allow such direct changes to significant historical nodes, especially when the matter is closely related to your own existence."
He paused, a flicker of dread in his eyes. "So, I understand that forceful prevention is infeasible. All I can do is 'follow' them. Follow them into that place to see with my own eyes what really happened, but as I just mentioned, it is meaningless."
"Then... did you lose them?"
Ian couldn't help asking. In a vast maze, losing track of a target seems reasonable.
But Musa slowly shook his head, that strange expression, mixed with confusion and a hint of fear, reappeared on his face.
"No, it's not losing track. That place... it's very 'peculiar,'" he searched for the right words, "It's not the magical secret realm we usually understand, no illusions or curses. It's just a cold, solid, Soviet-style underground bunker made of steel, concrete, and large pipes."
"However, its internal space... is 'chaotic,'" Musa, an alchemist, seemed to have no way to describe a situation he found bizarre.
"Chaotic?" Ian was puzzled.
"Yes," Musa affirmed, "Once you pass through the main entrance and enter the core area, space is no longer continuous. You will be randomly 'projected' to a certain area within the building. I've tried many times, no matter which entrance I go through, or at what time point, even attempting to enter right alongside Armani and Little Soma... the result is the same."
"Once we cross that invisible boundary, we are inevitably separated, appearing in different places. I can't control it, can't predict it. I've gone back numerous times, following them in, but each time, I can't appear in the same area as them, I can only search futilely in the area I've been randomly assigned to."
"Sensing the possible lingering scent of unique spices Armani carried, or the smell of the kind of pinewood torches Little Soma habitually used, but in the end, everything disappeared into the cold steel and dust scent..." The old man's voice trembled slightly, the kind of defeat in the face of an incomprehensible, unopposable oddity.
"I've traversed many corners of that underground project, seen the massive abandoned kitchens, freezers storing unknown frozen solid meats, and cultivation rooms full of eerie glowing mushrooms... I even suspect that the spatial anomaly there might be related to certain taboo experiments conducted by the Soviets, involving space compression or dimensional overlays. But I still never find them... I can never find where they ultimately went, or what they encountered."
The former Soviet underground nuclear defense project... affected by unknown forces... internally chaotic and random space... possibly existing peculiar ingredients...
Ian's thoughts raced. Suddenly, a light bulb went off in his mind, connecting to what Musa mentioned before, those 'former Soviet frozen goods' with questionable origins in the cellar!
He suddenly looked up, staring at Musa, eyes filled with astonishment: "Wait! Mr. Musa! Those... those fifty-year-old former Soviet cans and meats and vodka in your cellar... could they have been brought back from that place?"
Musa didn't seem surprised Ian quickly linked this, he nodded calmly: "Yes. In conducting time travel experiments, especially when pinpointing that particular time point, it's inevitable to come into contact with things from that era, that place."
"Bringing back some trivial items is part of testing the stability of time travel and the 'transportability of material,'" he seemed to say a frightening fact very calmly.
A feat in alchemy that even Nicolas Flamel had never achieved.