"Looks like we got back just in time. Thank you, Aiko."
Amid the sudden change, Fu Qian sounded as if he'd just had a stroke of good luck, and even made a point of thanking Aiko.
That was certainly the proper thing to say. If they'd been any later, the two of them would have been locked out.
Though according to Fu Qian's reasoning, if they'd been any later, perhaps the passage would have stayed open a little longer, too.
That was right: he suspected the change wasn't because the time of the miracle had run out. Nepheli might have had a hand in it.
They'd only just made it back. The last thing they needed was to invite more complications—like someone suddenly remembering another question and running back in.
It wasn't impossible.
Apart from reaching the same logical conclusion as Su Gao, Fu Qian's abundant experience in making things happen gave him additional reason to believe Nepheli.
Traveling through time wasn't easy. Among the Higher Beings, the Warehouse was the only one that had demonstrated authority over this kind of thing.
If the Ark really could send two people a thousand years into the past and disrupt history to this extent, the Warehouse would have wiped it out long ago.
So, just as he'd compared his experiences in Ancient Recollection to the feelings of "sightseers" earlier, he believed the people aboard this ship were in a similar situation to him and Selena during their exploration: using some kind of special power to relive a piece of history that had passed.
In essence, their existence remained anchored to reality—unless they were fully synchronized with the ship.
That was what made the distortion they'd encountered earlier so dangerous.
Of course, even then, they'd probably just be trapped and lost inside the