Just then, the Time who had brought Xu Qiuyan walked straight into the body of the Time standing beside me.
She gave Xu Qiuyan a meaningful look, then looked at me.
Xu Qiuyan ignored her completely and walked up to me. "What did you find?"
I smiled. Of course I had found something, and it was something important.
But I asked instead, "What about you?"
Before she could answer, Time sighed. "Like you, she discovered my secret."
I was slightly stunned. Could Xu Qiuyan have discovered that time truly existed, and that Time herself was time?
That was indeed the case. Xu Qiuyan said, "She is time itself. These living beings and everything in the world were given true life because of her. Otherwise, life would merely be a still image, an absolutely motionless image. She is clearly time, yet she has been telling us that time does not exist."
"I am indeed time. But in a certain sense, time truly does not exist. You simply cannot understand it yet. Never mind. You will understand eventually. Since you both feel that you have gained something, you may go back now."
As she spoke, she prepared to send us away.
"Wait," I said. "What about my friends?"
"They have already left, because they found the answers they wanted."
"They found their answers?"
"Yes."
But Xu Qiuyan said, "Didn't you hear what she said? They merely found the answers they wanted. Whether those answers are truly correct is another matter."
I looked at Time. She said, "No. The answers they wanted are the true answers, because they had always hoped that they were truly created by his spiritual power. That was the answer they received, and it was also the truth."
Xu Qiuyan did not believe her. "How could one person's spiritual