Difference in Time Flow

After seeing off the delighted old village chief and his son, Lin Yu could not help but shake his head.

This world really was magical enough!

Daimon clearly possessed the strength to contend with the Demon King's army, yet he did not dare earn recognition through his own power as Lin Yu had. Instead, he had to seek Lin Yu's favor to reclaim his family's former glory.

As far as Lin Yu knew, such things still existed even a thousand years later. The hero's party clearly possessed immense power, yet they were nearly sentenced to death simply for showing disrespect toward the king.

Most absurdly, they truly did not dare resist. In the end, they only survived the ordeal by talking their way out of it.

All he could say was that this world's rigid class system and servile mentality were still far too severe. It desperately needed another world's Chen Sheng and Wu Guang to shout that famous saying beloved in Huaxia during his previous life...

"The burden is heavy, and the road is long, Flamme!"

Lin Yu sighed, then promptly put the matter out of his mind.

The next day—or rather, the second day in Frieren World.

Early that morning, Lin Yu finished inscribing the Holy Scripture and opened the Chat Group in high spirits.

The reason he had kept it closed all night was actually because he had been conducting a small experiment to test his own conjecture.

Sure enough, when the chat window unfolded within his consciousness, the messages in the group were still where they had been when he closed the Chat Group yesterday...

Lin Yu's heart stirred, and he sent a message. "Good morning, everyone!"

The Chat Group fell silent for a moment. Soon, Su Haoming, the most idle of them all, replied.

[Su Haoming: Good morning, Big Boss!]

[Su Haoming: Is it morning where you are already?]

[Su Haoming: Then wasn't it just the middle of the night?]

[Lin Yu: Just now?]

[Su Haoming: Yeah, didn't you just leave a moment ago?]

[Su Haoming: Judging by the time, it couldn't have been more than a minute...]

So that was indeed the case...

Lin Yu thought to himself.

Ever since he saw the overall activity level, he had suspected that time flowed at different rates between different worlds.

By convention, the veteran members from the first batch should have received the Chat Group at the same time.

However, Lin Yu's true body was simply too enormous. Even something as powerful as the Chat Group required ten years to complete the recognition process, causing Lin Yu, despite being one of the original members, to enter the group a full ten years later than the other three.

Yet after Lin Yu entered the group, he discovered that the other three had joined merely three days before him.

Three days versus more than three thousand days meant a time-flow ratio of roughly 1:1000.

That ratio was utterly outrageous—so obvious it could practically be seen with the naked eye!

If that were truly the case, when the other members spent several seconds sending a message, Lin Yu's side should have needed at least several thousand seconds—an entire hour—to receive it.

Yet that was not what happened. Lin Yu's conversations with the other three had been perfectly smooth, without any such lengthy delays.

Because of that, Lin Yu had not dared jump to conclusions.

Only now, after discovering that the difference in time flow seemed to truly exist, did Lin Yu form an entirely new hypothesis.

After a brief moment of thought, he sent another message.

[Lin Yu: Brother Su, I think I've discovered something.]

[Lin Yu: Could you help me conduct an experiment?]

[Su Haoming: Sure!]

After receiving his response, Lin Yu immediately began explaining the experiment.

First, he kept the Chat Group open and had Su Haoming time things alongside him. When they compared their results one minute later, they were indeed completely identical.

Afterward, Lin Yu had Su Haoming begin timing again while he closed the Chat Group and silently kept time in Frieren World.

One hour later, he reopened the Chat Group and asked Su Haoming for his result. He discovered that his own hour had amounted to only three short seconds for Su Haoming, who had kept the Chat Group open.

So it really was the Chat Group's doing!

This thing truly deserved to be called something even Lin Yu could not comprehend. It could actually forcibly smooth over the differences in time flow between worlds, allowing people from two different worlds to communicate at the same temporal rate.

This already involved the laws of time that Lin Yu had yet to master!

Lin Yu was deeply astonished, and at the same time, he grew even more eager to discover what the Chat Group might be capable of.

After all, if the Chat Group could solve even an issue involving time, then the problem with him should not be a problem either, right?

[Su Haoming: So, Big Boss, what experiment were you actually doing?]

Seeing this new message, Lin Yu calmed himself, organized his thoughts, and told him the conclusion.

[Su Haoming: Wait, let me process this.]

[Su Haoming: You mean there are differences in time flow between worlds, and those differences function normally when we close the Chat Group, but are forcibly erased when we keep it open?]

[Lin Yu: That's right.]

[Su Haoming: No wonder you suddenly said good morning...]

[Su Haoming: But if that's really the case, why didn't we notice it before?]

[Lin Yu: Perhaps the time flow in your worlds is relatively similar, so the difference wasn't obvious enough.]

[Su Haoming: Then that means the Chat Group must have a standard time flow as a reference!]

Lin Yu was somewhat surprised when he saw those words.

After their exchanges yesterday, the images of the three group members had already taken shape in his mind.

Su Haoming struck him as a typical modern college student. Though he possessed a decent level of knowledge, his clear eyes still revealed a trace of foolishness untouched by the hardships of life.

But Lin Yu had not expected that this fellow's mind worked rather quickly. He had immediately thought of that possibility.

...It seemed he merely lacked life experience. He was not truly foolish.

[Lin Yu: That's what I think too.]

[Lin Yu: I currently have two hypotheses regarding this.]

[Lin Yu: The first is that the Chat Group uses the first member to join as its standard and establishes the group's time flow accordingly. The second is that the Chat Group already possesses a standard time flow of its own. That standard could be regarded as a factory setting, and it also raises another serious question: the Chat Group's true origin!]

[Su Haoming: ...]

[Su Haoming: Big Boss, may I timidly ask whether this is really something we can discuss?]

[Lin Yu: [Grinning]]

[Lin Yu: If something happens, I've got the height to take the hit. What are you afraid of?]

[Su Haoming: Don't scare me, Big Boss. I finally got this golden finger, and I still want to use it to get rich!]

[Lin Yu: Fine, asking you to consider questions on this level really is making things difficult for you.]

[Lin Yu: In any case, I may need to keep the Chat Group open at all times in order to stay synchronized with your time.]

[Su Haoming: ...I still find it hard to imagine that our worlds have a thousandfold difference in time flow. Forgive me for asking, but how old are you exactly, Big Boss?]

[Lin Yu: That's a good question. I don't know either.]

[Su Haoming: Are you in the four digits?]

Four digits?

Counting the time he had spent drifting through the void, it had long since far exceeded that!

Of course, though that period had been lengthy, it had not really felt like much to Lin Yu.

After all, time was merely a scale used to measure change.

Without anything to compare it against, no matter how long time lasted, it held no meaning.

So Lin Yu did not know how to answer that question either.

After pondering for a moment, he chose to reply with a smiling expression.

[Su Haoming: Hiss—]

[Su Haoming: As expected of a Big Boss. You're truly different from ordinary people like us!]

[Lin Yu: ...]

[Lin Yu: Don't say that. I was only lucky enough to transmigrate into this world. You'd be the same in my place.]

The same?

Not at all!

In Tang Gui World, Su Haoming wore a complicated expression. He could not imagine what he would become after enduring such long years, but no matter what form he took, he definitely would not still be the person he was now.

Lin Yu himself had always believed that his current standing was merely the result of luck—he had happened to encounter a newborn universe.

But in truth, not everyone could be like him. After spending an almost eternal stretch of time in a dead, silent void where not even the slightest hope could be seen, he had still managed to retain a human mind.

Frankly speaking, this was no longer a mental state that a human could possess!

On this point, no one had more authority to speak than Frieren World's World Consciousness.

In Its eyes, Lin Yu was an innate sacred being who regarded himself as "human," possessing an unwavering mental state and a terrifying obsession firm enough to devour the World Consciousness...