Chapter 48, Section 45: The Broken Cycle 5
The world became quiet again.
The Black Robed Woman remained kneeling, motionless, as if he had become another stone statue. All his strength and all his emotions seemed to have been drained away with the disappearance of that feather. Only an empty sense of bewilderment remained in his heart, along with a faint hope that he himself dared not even think about deeply.
"Beep beep beep beep~"
Just then, a silver communication badge bearing the emblem of the Department of Mysteries, which was clipped to his waist, suddenly vibrated slightly and emitted a soft white light.
Then, a calm, rational, and emotionless male voice sounded directly in his mind, using encrypted mental communication.
The "Cleanse Code: Abyssal Echo " mission has timed out. External monitoring shows the high-energy reaction within the target area has subsided. Please confirm your status and mission completion. (Repeatedly, please confirm your status and mission completion.) According to procedure, after mission confirmation, you need to immediately report to the Purification Chamber. Please reply.
These are the logistics and surveillance personnel of the Department of Mysteries.
They had clearly been monitoring the energy fluctuations here. Saruman's death marked the end of the high-energy reaction; it's just unknown whether these people realized Saruman's intentions.
certainly.
Even if you notice, it's not a big deal.
after all.
They were all people who had received Saruman's favor.
"Do we need to go to the purification chamber?" The Black Robed Woman was very familiar with that place. It was the final resting place for all the "cleaners" who had carried out the cleanup missions of deeply polluted areas.
Of course, it wasn't an immediate execution.
Rather, it is a complete "purification".
Um.
In reality, the outcome is similar to execution; both result in death.
certainly.
Some are still alive, but the number is truly small.
The mechanism operating there is simple, and it is also one of Saruman's alchemical achievements. It uses powerful Ancient Magic circles and relics to try to peel away, dispel, or at least permanently seal the pollution accumulated on the executor.
Although there is a success rate, very few succeed. Most perish during the process due to the deep bond between their souls and the pollution, either collapsing or transforming into something even more terrifying. Even those who succeed often lose all their power and have fragmented memories, becoming "clean useless people" who need to be closely monitored.
It's not something you just throw away after using it.
Treat Auror as valuable talents.
This was the ending they knew when they joined; it was the price they had to pay to maintain the seal. The Black Robed Woman neither feared death nor resisted "purification."
That was the Destiny he had already accepted.
but----
He looked down at Saruman's peaceful face, then looked up at the void where the Raven feather had disappeared.
The Black Robed Woman really wanted to see it for himself, or at least wait and see if his teacher had truly succeeded. Could that feather truly carry his teacher's good soul, flowing against the current of time, back to R'lyeh a thousand years ago? Could his teacher truly change the Destiny of Karg and Lina, and avert that tragedy?
Curiosity is both Wizard's greatest strength and his greatest enemy.
The Black Robed Woman couldn't help but wonder. If they succeeded—would history be slightly altered as a result?
Even if this deviation is so small that no one notices it, will he, who knows everything, sense it? Or will the world itself provide some kind of positive feedback?
The more I think about it, the more I crave an answer.
so.
The Black Robed Woman did not want to undergo purification for the time being.
He needs to wait.
Even if it's just a moment longer, a few more minutes... But at that moment, the communication badge lit up again, with a hint of urgency. "Please reply immediately. Your vital signs are extremely unstable, and the pollution index is critical. Repeat, please proceed to the purification chamber immediately."
When questioned by colleagues.
The Black Robed Woman slowly reached out and, with his last bit of strength, removed the communication badge from his waist. There was no response, nor was it turned off; he simply placed it gently on the ground.
He slid down against the cold wall, sitting right next to Saruman's corpse, then closed his eyes, ignoring the badge's continued vibrations and the recurring urging voice in his mind.
He simply waited quietly.
We await a miracle that may never come, a ripple that might be barely perceptible in the long river of history.
The turbulence of time and space cannot be described in any ordinary language.
There is no direction, no up or down, no past or future. There are only countless fragmented, out-of-control, flickering lights and shadows, and contradictory and paradoxical pieces of information sweeping in like a storm.
The closer we get to our goal...
The more you perceive something, the more anchored you become.
Among them are R'lyeh's frantic whispers, the intense light bursting from the magic circle, Saruman's and his companions' gasps as they are sucked in, and the hazy echoes of war from even more distant times.
There's even a fleeting glimpse of a future possibility that hasn't yet occurred.
In such a place, a dark silver light, like a small boat struggling to move forward in a raging storm, traversed this absolutely chaotic dimension.
This is the sanctuary formed from the Raven's tail feather. Inside, Saruman's soul core, the spiritual essence that embodies his millennia of wisdom, memories, emotions, and purest obsessions, lies dormant, or rather, "perceives" everything in the outside world in a way that transcends comprehension.
Legend, isn't it?
That's already extraordinary.
Voldemort was able to perceive the outside world even with his remaining soul.
Not to mention a complete soul.
Saruman validated his theory.
He is indeed going back in time.
The power of the feathers did not arbitrarily reverse time, but rather subtly followed the intricate, millennia-long causal threads between Saruman himself and R'lyeh, Ian Prince, Karg and Lina, like a spider crawling along its web, searching for the most vulnerable and crucial "node."
The Raven's feathers are also very fine.
It avoided the heavy, unshakeable "main trunk" of cause and effect, and precisely glided towards the relatively subtle "tributary" that led to Saruman and his companions being unexpectedly caught up in the temporal turbulence.
Countless lights and shadows rushed backward, and countless sounds fell silent.
Finally, the dark silver boat abruptly stopped, as if it had crashed into an invisible but resilient membrane. That was R'lyeh's self-contained spacetime barrier, the barrier between that mad territory and the normal flow of time, and also the "wall" of the temporary passage that Ian Prince had forcibly opened using a magic circle.
"Can we go in?"
Saruman also somewhat nervous.
If it were an ordinary soul, no matter how powerful, it would be instantly Confringo upon encountering this barrier, which contains the aura of the Great Old Ones and the aftershocks of Legend magic.
Or they may be completely contaminated and assimilated.
But the Raven's Feather are different.
It seems to have an innate affinity with this kind of "anomaly" and "rift" in time and space.
The mysterious runes flowing on the surface of the feathers flickered rapidly, and the dark silver light became liquid, slowly and Silencio "seeping" into the barrier.
There was still no fierce confrontation, nor any grand scene of energy explosion; there was only a natural fusion process, like water droplets merging into a sponge.
"I knew Raven feathers could do that!"
And so, the feather, enveloping Saruman's soul, passed through the barrier and re-entered the chaotic and insane spacetime structure of R'lyeh.
However, it does not manifest in the material world, but rather exists in a more hidden state, almost like "information" or "concept," attached to the underlying rules of this spacetime.
Like a virus lurking in the host's genetic chain, quietly waiting for the right moment to be activated.
Saruman wasn't in a hurry.
He knew what the Raven's feathers were waiting for.
Its target is clear—a thousand years ago, in the central square of R'lyeh City, Ian activated the magic circle, a burst of intense light erupted, and the suction force was generated in that "moment".
This "moment" is fleeting in the normal flow of time, but in R'lyeh's distorted spacetime and Raven's Feather's perception, it is stretched into an operable "window".
As it drew nearer, the dark silver light darted through the cracks of space and time. Finally, it "sensed" that specific coordinate, felt the energy of the berserk magic circle that Saruman was familiar with, and sensed the irresistible pulling and peeling away of the fluctuations of three young and familiar souls!
There was no need for the elderly Saruman to remind them.
Now!
Raven's Feather was no longer hidden. It suddenly "leaped" out from the spacetime rift, its dark silver light surging instantly, transforming into a thin yet incredibly strong thread that precisely "wrapped" around the three souls caught in the turbulence, specifically the one most central and most causally connected to Saruman.
Young Saruman! At this moment, young Saruman felt as if his soul and body were being torn apart, his consciousness adrift in a torrent of information, about to sink completely into darkness.
"Am I really going to die?"
Young Saruman thought so.
Just then, a strange, indescribable, gentle yet immense will, like a mother's arm, gently supported his fading consciousness.
Countless complex and profound knowledge, memories, and emotions—about the true meaning of magic, the mysteries of time, the horrors of R'lyeh, the fate of Karg and Lina, and an obsession and plan spanning a thousand years—all surged into this young body like a flood bursting its banks!
"Ughhhhh--!" A silent scream erupted from the soul level.
A violent sense of expansion, tearing, and a strange feeling as if he were being forcibly "covered" or "fused" filled his entire being.
This is not possession, nor is it replacement.
The power of the Raven's Feather.
The thousand-year-old soul and wisdom of the elderly Saruman are more like an overly large "operating system" and "database" that has been forcibly installed into a "hardware" with limited capacity.
This is why the elderly Saruman knew he could never return. Everything unfolded as he had calculated. The self-awareness, memories, and emotions of the young Saruman remained the core, but the soul merged with the elderly Saruman instantly expanded, elevated, and filled with a vast amount of information that did not originally belong to his age and experience.
This process was both incredibly painful and incredibly wondrous.
It felt like a fleeting moment, yet also like a thousand years had passed.
As the impact of that information deluge subsided slightly, and as the excruciating pain in his soul gradually transformed into a feeling of power that was almost overwhelming— Saruman suddenly opened his eyes! What came into view was no longer the dimness of the underground Chamber of Secrets a thousand years later, nor the bizarre and fantastical scenes of the turbulent flow of time and space.
It is light.
An endless, breathtakingly dazzling magic circle of light, filled with a blasphemous and chaotic beauty!
It was a deafening shriek, a sound that seemed to tear space apart, and a roar of surging energy!
It's the feeling of weightlessness as your body is being torn apart by an invisible, enormous force and falling toward the center of the light!
And, so close at hand, Karg's roar, filled with terror and worry, and Lina's faint, weak voice on his back...
A painful groan.
He's back.
No, to be more precise, the souls of a thousand years later have returned to their rightful place.
Using this young, vibrant body, which has reached the threshold of Legend, as its vessel, carrying wisdom and aspirations that transcend time and space, it returns to this moment that determines everything!
The gale-force winds of R'lyeh tore at his silver robes, and the light from the magic circle illuminated his suddenly deep, complex, and seemingly timeless silver eyes.
The next second, the boundless light completely engulfed the three of them. The true "change" had already begun the moment their souls returned to their rightful place. In the light, Saruman's lips curved upwards in a very slight, cold, and decisive arc.
He is both the elderly Saruman.
It was also a young Saruman.
None of that matters. What matters is that at this moment, Saruman knows many things he shouldn't know, and he understands what he needs to do.
Transmission is ongoing.
Consciousness teetered on the brink of collapse amidst the raging energy turbulence and the tearing apart of spacetime. Saruman, who had merged millennia of wisdom with a youthful body, forcibly stabilized his mind, which was on the verge of being scattered once again.
"Are we going to face that monster?"
He felt as if he had been thrown into a void tunnel made of pure chaos, surrounded no longer by the green boulders of R'lyeh, but by countless rapidly spinning and meaningless fragments of light and shadow and sharp noise.
The feeling of having my eyes back is truly amazing.
certainly.
It was quite difficult to discern one's surroundings using only the eyes. Saruman Hard Work "open" his more acute, merged eyes of perception, searching through this void.
It wasn't about finding a way out—that was for later—but about immediately confirming Karg and Lina's condition, and—that crucial figure.
His mental tendrils stretched outward like a spider web, resisting the turbulent currents. Soon, he "sensed" Karg's resilient yet furious soul fluctuations, and Lina's faint, corrupted, flickering flame of life, like a candle in the wind. They were not far apart and were both adrift in this void.
However, just as he was trying to pinpoint their location more precisely and consider how to offer assistance, Saruman's " Mind's Eye " suddenly caught sight of another being.
Just "above" this chaotic void.
Or rather, on a "level" parallel to their falling trajectory yet seemingly a higher dimension, a figure is "standing" there in an extremely stable, even "leisurely" posture.
He was a young man dressed in a simple black robe.
Black, tousled hair fluttered gently in the non-existent energy breeze, revealing a handsome face that was almost otherworldly.
Yet his face was as cold as ancient ice.
It was Ian Prince!
"Cold, shivering—it seems you're the most physically fit among this batch of new recruits." Ian's tone was flat and monotone, as if stating an objective fact unrelated to himself.
Saruman: "----?"
Even with the vast knowledge, forbidden experiences, and profound understanding of Ian Prince's power and mystery accumulated over millennia by the elderly Saruman, his young face still displayed an uncontrollable, utterly bewildered and blank expression.
To be honest...
Saruman couldn't understand a word the other person was saying.