Qian Renxue (70)

Night fell once more. Qian Renxue lay on the inn bed and did not go to sleep right away. She tried to feel her own existence, that heavy sensation brought by "Time Anchoring." When she was in the God Realm, that feeling had been very obvious. She had been like an object that was too real, standing out starkly in an environment that was comparatively illusory. But on the Douluo Continent, that feeling had become subtle.

This world itself was very "real." The existence of mortals, the existence of matter, the passage of time—everything was more concrete, more weighty than in the God Realm. Here, her nature as a time anchor instead seemed to blend into the background, no longer so conspicuous.

But when she focused, she could still sense the difference. She could feel her connection to this world, not through divine power, but through time. Her past—not only the past in which she had been Qian Renxue, but also those moments when she had guarded this world as the Angel God—had left marks in the river of time. These marks were like anchors, fixing her in the here and now.

"I need a future." She closed her eyes and let her consciousness extend along the timeline toward the future.

It was not prophecy. That was beyond her ability. It was sensing branches of possibility. From her current position, the future was like a tree with countless forks. Some forks were very clear, choices she might make: continuing to study the rifts, helping infected people like Lin Mo and Xiao Yu, heading to other rift observation points. Some forks were very blurred, possibilities decided by external factors: the rifts suddenly expanding, crisis erupting across the continent, Tang Wulin descending from the God Realm...

And at the end of all