The Ice Empress and the Paradox of Time and Parallel Worlds

The moment he passed through the Anywhere Door, a familiar, bone-chilling aura rushed toward him.

Su Hui took a deep breath.

The frigid air poured into his lungs, carrying the distinct, biting sharpness of snow dust.

As far as his eyes could see, there was only a vast, white wasteland of ice and snow.

Between heaven and earth, nothing remained but a palette woven from pure white and grayish-blue.

This place is still more comfortable.

He muttered to himself in his heart.

A place like Shrek City, for all its prosperity, simply lacked the tranquility of the Far North.

"This is... the Far North?"

The voice of the Ice Empress drifted from his Sea of Consciousness, her tone laced with unconcealable astonishment.

She used Su Hui's senses to survey the surroundings.

The rolling glaciers, the howling frigid winds, the ice ridges faintly visible in the distance—everything was far too familiar, yet vaguely strange.

"What is going on here?"

She seemed to be asking Su Hui, yet also talking to herself.

"You were just in that human city, and after passing through that pink door, you returned directly to the Far North?!"

Su Hui smiled.

"I forgot to explain it to you in detail; my second martial soul is called the Anywhere Door."

"Anywhere Door?"

"Used for traversing space and time."

Su Hui spread his hands. "It's not just a leap across space, but time as well."

The Ice Empress remained silent for two breaths.

"So, when you suddenly appeared before me earlier and launched a sneak attack—"

"Ahem."

Su Hui gave a dry cough, cutting off the topic.

"Sneak attack" really sounded strange when put that way.

"Well, you know how the situation was back then. If I had approached you head-on, Ice Empress, you certainly wouldn't have listened to a human like me."

"..."

The Ice Empress didn't respond, but Su Hui could sense a subtle trace of speechlessness within his Sea of Consciousness.

He decided to change the subject quickly.

"There is one more thing."

Su Hui said with a serious expression, "Although this is the Far North, it is not the Far North you are familiar with."

"...What do you mean?"

"Ten thousand years."

Su Hui held up one finger.

"This place is exactly ten thousand years earlier than the era you lived in."

"..."

This time, the Ice Empress's silence lasted even longer.

She carefully sensed the surrounding environment.

The winds and snow of the Far North, the terrain, and the concentration of heaven and earth energy in the air were indeed subtly different from her memories.

The difference was extremely minute, like the same painting being redrawn with slightly different brushstrokes; one wouldn't notice it without careful scrutiny.

"Traversing space, and even time, with a span of ten thousand years..."

For the first time, something indescribable appeared in the Ice Empress's tone.

It wasn't fear, but rather an instinctive awe when faced with the unknown.

"What exactly is your martial soul? Such a thing, even those legendary gods—"

She paused.

Gods.

Once those two words appeared in her mind, they could no longer be cast aside.

Traversing time and space was a realm that, in her eyes, only gods could touch.

Yet Su Hui was merely a Soul Elder, a youth who hadn't even reached the level of a Soul Ancestor.

"You wouldn't happen to be the reincarnation of some god, would you?"

Ice Empress's voice was somewhat hurried.

Su Hui was amused by this question.

"Heh, if I were the reincarnation of some god, would I have needed to resort to underhanded sneak attacks against you back then? I could have just slapped you into submission."

Ice Empress thought about it and decided that while the words were unpleasant, they were indeed logical.

"Then why did you teleport yourself ten thousand years into the past?"

"You've got it backward."

Su Hui shook his head. "In fact, this is the era I live in."

"I merely traveled to your time ten thousand years in the future; now, I have simply returned to my own timeline."

"!"

Ice Empress's train of thought stalled for a beat once again.

So, what she considered the "present" was actually Su Hui's "future"?

And Su Hui's "present" was her true "past"?

The timeline tangled in her mind like a mess of hempen thread, and in the end, she simply gave up on trying to figure it out.

Su Hui did not continue the topic, shifting his attention to the task at hand.

He fished the man in black's storage Soul Tool from his robes; the craftsmanship was so crude it was painful to look at.

Su Hui probed it with his soul power, his expression quickly shifting from anticipation to disdain.

Over a thousand Gold Soul Coins were scattered haphazardly in a corner.

There were a few pieces of mediocre ore, mostly common goods like Iron Essence and Copper Mother.

There were also some dried-up herbs, stored so perfunctorily that most of their medicinal potency had dissipated.

"Broke."

Su Hui's evaluation was concise.

He kept searching and finally found something halfway useful in a hidden compartment of the storage space.

An engraving knife.

The blade was slender, shimmering with a faint silver light, and the handle was carved with a few crooked inscriptions.

It certainly couldn't compare to a Ranking List Engraving Knife, but it was still a fine piece, barely sufficient for carving core arrays for Soul Tools.

"At least there's something usable."

Su Hui spun the engraving knife between his fingers; it felt decent enough.

He packed everything away and couldn't help but lament, "Soul Masters on the Douluo Continent are truly poor; they don't even have a decent medicinal pill."

"Killing people and looting their goods won't make you rich on the Douluo Continent at all. It's a waste of effort."

When it came down to it, the Douluo Continent was just too barren.

It wasn't a lack of material resources, but a barrenness of the system.

Take the Dou Qi Continent, for example—they had the Dou Qi system and the Alchemist system.

The medicinal pill system on the Douluo Continent had barely developed at all.

Even the Spirit Bones that Soul Masters treated as treasures were rare items that could be sought but never found.

Immortal herbs were things most people would never even encounter.

Although Shrek City looked bright and glamorous, the essence of its inherent poverty hadn't changed much.

Just as Su Hui was tucking these scraps away, Ice Empress suddenly spoke up.

"Su Hui, I've thought of a question."

"Hmm?"

"You said this is ten thousand years ago..." Ice Empress's tone was slow, as if she were carefully piecing together a fragile puzzle.

"I have already sacrificed myself into your body, so... where am I, in this era?"

Su Hui's movements froze.

He hadn't actually thought about this question carefully.

Time paradoxes, parallel worlds, causal loops... a pile of concepts swirled in his mind, getting messier the more he thought about them.

He had even doubted whether the space-time he traveled to was the same world at all.

Or did every Gate of Opening lead to a completely different parallel plane?

He eventually gave up on the thought.

"You, in this time, are likely just staying somewhere in the Far North."

Su Hui gestured toward the north with his chin.

"The Far North is your territory, and in this era, you remain an overlord."

He paused, then said earnestly, "However, I suggest that the two of you had best not meet."

"Mm."

Ice Empress expressed rare agreement.

It made sense, after all.

One version of oneself standing before the other, two identical souls gazing at each other across the divide of time and space.

Just simulating that image in one's mind was enough to make anyone feel uneasy.

However, Su Hui was considering much more.

In the various films and television works he had watched regarding time and space, the meeting of the same person from the past and future always triggered anomalies.

Heaven only knew what strange phenomena might occur if two Ice Empresses were to meet.

Whether it was spatial collapse or a temporal backlash, neither was anything to be trifled with.

Ice Empress suddenly grew alert.

"Hey, there is the scent of humans ahead."

She said, her tone rapidly turning cold, "And the scent of my own kin as well."

Su Hui raised an eyebrow.

"Are human soul masters hunting Ice Jade Scorpions?" he asked.

Ice Empress did not answer.

But the surging, icy fury within the Sea of Consciousness said everything.

For this overlord race of the Far North, humans hunting her kin was an act that had never been tolerable.

"Let's go take a look."

With a shift of his focus, Su Hui hurried toward the direction indicated by Ice Empress.