Chapter 55: The Endless Loop

A small wooden cabin that looked as though it were inhabited by a family of three.

Candlelight flickered.

Hua Sheng and Mieying had found Jane, who had previously vanished right in front of the cabin, and confirmed that it was truly her. Yet, everything only grew more baffling.

The three of them stared at each other in bewilderment.

They were no longer underground; Hua Sheng and Mieying had no idea when they had returned to the surface.

What kind of people lived in this wooden cabin? If a family of three truly resided here, where had they gone now?

Hua Sheng fell into deep thought. Right now, there were three of them in this house. It also seemed to house three people—was this number merely a coincidence?

He, Mieying, and Jane came from different places and possessed completely different backgrounds.

He was called the Spirit of the Phoenix, yet Lan Caihe insisted he was a demon. So, let them just consider him a celestial spirit for now. Mieying was a Miemeng bird, and Jane was a genuine, flesh-and-blood human. There were no ties between them, nor did they come from the same family; they were not related.

Then why had the occupants of this house vanished, leaving the exact same number of people behind in their place?

No, judging by the clothes left in the house, they should belong to parents and a young boy—meaning two males and one female. Yet currently, there were two females and one male.

However, a thought instantly struck him: in that world within his mind, reached after shattering the Jupiter Veil, Mieying had appeared as a boy. Viewed that way, the two males and one female matched up perfectly.

Yet even if they matched now, what did it signify? Who on earth was trying to send them this kind of message?

"So you're saying Jane is the real person, not an impostor?"

Mieying was the first to lose her patience and speak up.

Jane quickly retorted, "I was just about to suspect that the two of you were the impostors!"

Mieying glanced at Hua Sheng beside her, and Hua Sheng shook his head as well.

She then said, "If that's the case, Miss here and Hua Sheng have returned to the past. Did we travel backward in time by about the span of an incense stick within that bottomless pit?"

Jane's words carried doubt: "I have never heard of any place capable of time travel."

Hua Sheng replied, "In our Shengpingning, there is a place called the Coiled-String Cave. It is possible to perform extremely brief time travel targeting a specific object there, but traveling back to a previous scene like this is beyond even its capabilities. If anything could accomplish this, perhaps it would only be that supreme supreme treasure, the Jupiter Veil. But we do not possess the Jupiter Veil."

"Yet, based on how things look, the two of us truly returned to the past. How do you explain this?" Mieying asked, somewhat puzzled.

"Suppose... and I mean suppose, we didn't actually time travel?" Hua Sheng said slowly. "Is it possible that an illusion resembling time travel was created simply through changes in the scenery?"

Mieying shook her head hurriedly and said, "How could that be? This isn't some soul-capturing spell aimed at a single individual; there are three of us here now!"

Jane expressed her agreement with Mieying's view. She said, "Perhaps a few people combined with shifts in scenery can temporarily deceive a single target—that sort of thing appears on television prank shows sometimes—but deceiving multiple people simultaneously is impossible. Especially people who understand magic; making them all believe time travel has occurred under different scenarios simply cannot be done."

Hua Sheng rested his chin in his hand and mused, "Jane, what did you call this forest at first—P-something?"

"Paimpont... if translated phonetically, it's the Forest of Paimpont."

"Is there anything special about this forest?"

"If we're talking about special features, we locals often call it the Enchanted Forest."

"Is there a legend associated with it?"

"Because the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table from the Middle Ages originated right from this forest."

Hua Sheng asked in astonishment, "The Knights of the Round Table?"

Mieying asked, "You've heard of them?"

"I watched a cartoon about them when I was a child..."

Jane explained, "The Forest of Paimpont is also known as the Brocéliande Forest. This forest is filled with mysterious magical power; legends say that ancient fairies and wizards dwell deep within the woods. Some even believe that women abandoned by their lovers in ancient times live here too, hiding in the forest to set all sorts of traps, luring in faithless men who stray into its depths. Therefore, this forest is also called the Labyrinth Forest, and very few people dare to venture deep into it alone."

"Faithless men..." Mieying murmured thoughtfully.

Jane continued, "Legend has it that King Arthur once dispatched his Knights of the Round Table to search for the Holy Grail hidden here, and Merlin, the most famous magician who assisted King Arthur in achieving his great enterprise, experienced all sorts of magical tales in this very place. Yet this great magician, who could foresee the future and control the destinies of others, ultimately fell to love. He fell deeply in love with Viviane, the Lady of the Lake, and taught her all his magic without reservation. Having learned Merlin's weaknesses, Viviane cast a spell on him, imprisoning him forever inside an oak tree."

Mieying asked, "But this doesn't seem to have any connection to our current situation, does it?"

Hua Sheng said, "I just wanted to understand whether this place is a special magic array, or rather, a magical formation. Put that way, could this forest truly possess some kind of magical power?"

Jane nodded.

After thinking for a moment, Hua Sheng said, "Once we put on the Taoist robes of the Artistry Academy, our celestial arts abilities receive a certain boost in potency. So I was wondering, might magic work the same way—that casting spells within a magical forest yields unexpectedly favorable effects?"

Jane said, "What you're saying makes some sense. This forest, especially its depths, is akin to a natural magical array. But even so, I still maintain that traveling through time is impossible."

"That's fine. What I'm trying to prove isn't true time travel, but rather that an illusion was produced in us solely through false scenery."

"Huh?" Jane said in surprise. "I knocked on the door less than a minute after I separated from you both, and I ran into you right away. But according to what you're saying, you spent at least ten minutes. The durations don't match up, do they? No matter how much the scenery changes, that's impossible to achieve. Where did the missing time go?"

Hua Sheng frowned and said, "I have some inkling. Since all three of us are real, to solve the puzzle, we must first resolve two missing problems. One is the ten minutes of missing time between us that you mentioned, Jane, and the other is the missing space where we remained right in place despite having descended deep underground."

Jane replied, "Simply put, we shouldn't exist in the same spacetime, yet as a matter of fact, we've run into each other."

Hua Sheng pulled the iron ring and lifted the wooden floorboards.

"So before that, I need to verify something with you regarding the bottomless pit."

He pointed to the dark hole below, then pointed to the fireplace where he and Mieying had fallen, and asked, "Just now, we truly plummeted down this hole for a very long way. From a magical standpoint, is it possible to use magic to stretch the spatial distance between two places that are clearly very close? Even extend it infinitely?"

Jane narrowed her eyes and pondered for a long time, as if she had thought of something, then shook her head in self-denial.

She repeated this several times until she finally settled on an answer she could be certain of.

Thus, Jane slowly uttered six words:

"The Möbius strip."