Time, time

After saying goodbye to Old Sam and his family, Lin Xu followed Agamotto to Kamar-Taj.

In a sealed chamber made of magical elements, a mass of blue energy floated at the very center, pierced by a long green line.

"I used White Magic to simulate the temporal and spatial structures of this universe." Agamotto looked grave, his first meeting's courteous manner gone.

"Originally, the temporal structure was just like the spatial structure, both of them no more than a mist. But half an hour ago, it began to change. It's becoming solid, and there's still no sign of it stopping!"

"If it started half an hour ago, then it has nothing to do with me. I was sitting in a car converting divine power at the time."

After thinking it over carefully, Lin Xu shook his head and ruled himself out. Then he asked, "Is the change instantaneous? Could there be a delay?"

Agamotto turned to look at him, surprise in his eyes. He said nothing, yet seemed to say everything.

Lin Xu understood. That was the look someone gave an idiot...

Right. It was the temporal structure, so of course it was instantaneous.

He hurriedly changed the subject. "Can't you travel through time? Can't you take a look and see what's going on?"

Agamotto sighed. "That's where the problem lies. The temporal structure is constantly changing. If I rashly enter it, there are only two possibilities."

"What are they?"

"Either I assimilate time, or time assimilates me..."

Hearing that, four words popped into Lin Xu's head.

Merge with the Dao!!

"Have you heard of anything like this?"

"...I only got into this line of work a few days ago, and you're asking me?"

Agamotto couldn't help laughing a little. In his desperation, he had even gone and asked a child.

"Could someone be controlling it? But who besides Eternity, one of the Five Cosmic Entities, could manipulate time like this?"

"There are plenty... the Dark Sorcerer Supreme, He Who Remains, Kronos, Dark Phoenix, Loki, the God of Stories..."

Lin Xu trailed off into silence. Could it really be him?

Then he thought of that Logan who was only 1.6 meters tall...

Agamotto's gaze remained fixed on the temporal structure conjured by White Magic, and he didn't notice anything odd about Lin Xu. He began ruling out the possibilities one by one. "The Phoenix was sealed away by Mother and the big cat. Kronos died of old age on Titanos. The Dark Sorcerer Supreme is impossible. And who are this He Who Remains and God of Stories you mentioned?"

As mentioned earlier, because space in this universe was especially fragile, Agamotto had no plans to travel through the Multiverse, even though he had transcended time. As a result, he knew very little about certain things outside this universe.

"TVA!" Lin Xu looked at Agamotto and slowly pronounced the three letters.

"What's that? The Tennessee Valley Authority?" (Tennessee Valley Authority, established in 1933)

Lin Xu: ...

"It's the Time Variance Authority..."

"The Time Variance Authority?" Agamotto repeated the name.

"Yes. As I understand it, the organization has had two leaders in succession: He Who Remains and the God of Stories, the ones I mentioned. The former is from more than a thousand years in the future, and the latter is the son of Laufey, a Frost Giant. Their main purpose is to monitor the timelines of the Multiverse, prevent time paradoxes, and prune away branch timelines that shouldn't exist!"

"Did you just say prune?" Agamotto immediately seized on the key word and asked, "How do they prune them?"

"That is... erase them..."

"..."

Agamotto fell silent.

He had once thought himself stubborn enough for preventing branches in time from appearing. He hadn't expected someone else to be even more ruthless.

Temporal chaos and time paradoxes were indeed serious problems. He could understand the methods of this so-called TVA.

But... if his universe were also brought under the Time Variance Authority's control, he would absolutely stop them from pruning its timeline branches!

Fate shouldn't be in someone else's hands!!

"How sure are you? Don't rush to answer. Think carefully."

Lin Xu turned to look at Agamotto, and a bold conjecture surfaced in his mind.

"Pruning the timeline, even destroying every branch of this established timeline, wouldn't affect you!"

"That's right."

"Then why?"

"Because this is my home. I've lived here for a million years. If the whole home is destroyed because someone in the family made a mistake, then that means I, as the head of the family, am at fault. But I absolutely won't allow outsiders to judge this home, much less decide whether it lives or dies!"

That was right!

Hearing that, Lin Xu thought of his own home, of how, decades ago, his own people had shut the doors and fought among themselves. That was a problem within the family, and it did need to be resolved.

But if outsiders interfered, well, sorry!

After thinking for a moment, Lin Xu said, "If I really didn't affect time without realizing it, then there's an eighty percent chance it's the TVA!"

"Eighty percent. All right, I understand."

Agamotto waved his hand.

"Go on, have a look around. In five days, I'll send you out of this universe!"

In the blink of an eye, Lin Xu was back in Kamloops.

He knew Agamotto had made his choice.

He would venture into time, and either be assimilated by it or assimilate it himself. But either outcome would free them from the Time Variance Authority's attempts to rein them in!

He couldn't speak for the Agamottos of other universes, but this one was a hero!

Now, Lin Xu was in no hurry to follow Logan either. Agamotto had promised to send him back in five days, and who knew when Deadpool would show up.

So he might as well look around first. In neither his past life nor this one had he visited this country, where celebrities loved to make their homes.

He had been busy ever since entering Kamar-Taj. It was rare for him to have some time to relax.

Coming out of the alley, he looked around. The city wasn't very large. Ninety percent of British Columbia's population was concentrated to the south, in Victoria and Vancouver.

It was only 1979, and the scattered buildings were comparable to what he had seen on his last trip to Norway. Rather than a city, it was more like a small town built on a hillside by the river.

Looking at the river winding through the city ahead, Lin Xu felt his hands itch.

The water pollution in America was too severe. Even if there were fish, he wouldn't dare eat them. It was different here. Though it couldn't compare with the Nordic countries, it was at least far better than America!

He picked a hill at random, sat down on the ground, and resumed converting divine power. It was the early hours of the morning, so it counted as the next day, keeping him within the limit of two or three hours a day!

Early the next morning, when it was fully light, Lin Xu walked about two hundred meters along the river before finally spotting a fishing tackle shop.

"Welcome! How can I help you?"

Lin Xu had only just approached and hadn't even entered when the enthusiastic greeting rang out from inside.

That way of drawing in customers felt so familiar.

He walked into the shop. The owner was an Asian man about 195 centimeters tall, holding a stack of newspapers printed in traditional Chinese characters.

Lin Xu could just make out the words Ming Pao and Jin Yong.

Just as he thought!!

"Can you help with anything?"

"Of course!"

"Then get me an AK."

"..."