Chapter 1105. True Form

"The past... The past..." Lily's voice now carried renewed strength. Sparkle's words seemed to have triggered a new sense of resolve in her

Her deep affection for Charles surged through her.

Sparkle was right. She couldn't give up now. As long as she could master her control over time, they wouldn't have to head to the future to accept an inevitable despair. They could evade that by returning to the past.

Even though that just meant running away from the inevitable, at least they would survive.

At this thought, Lily resumed her analysis of the 010 that was still trying to escape. She had to complete her previous task.

Sensing Lily's revived determination, Sparkle immediately assisted on a mental level.

Without anyone else to disrupt them, the duo made swift progress. As Lily seized control of other instances of 010 in the other timelines, she soon came to understand its buried knowledge.

At first, acquiring the knowledge was all too smooth. But it didn't take long for her to reach a bottleneck.

Understanding time was easy. However, to master control over time was a different story. Human cognition and comprehension were far from enough. Under such circumstances, Lily had to change her way of thinking and elevate it to another level.

010 had no consciousness or personality. Perhaps... she ought to do the same. Perhaps only by becoming like 010 could she truly master time itself.

Lily pondered for a few brief seconds before she decided to take this crucial step. If that was the future awaiting them, then there was nothing to hesitate about.

The process restarted; a tidal wave of vast knowledge overwhelmed Lily, scrubbing away and diluting whatever was left of her previous self. Filtering. Dissolving. Reassembling.

Finally, they began to congeal into a form that would never have existed in reality.

As Lily absorbed the vast knowledge, her body, the massive sun, began to form afterimages.

Before her, an amber-hued sunrise flickered into existence. Behind her, a burnt-orange sunset mirrored it perfectly.

With a crisp crack, the rising sun and setting sun swiftly drew apart. In the widening space between them, more solar afterimages emerged, each with varying degrees of hue. They aligned themselves into a long line before gradually curving to form a perfect ring where the head met the tail.

What is time?

Time is the measure of the eternal movement of matter.

Time is a manifestation of continuity and sequence.

Time is a parameter invented by humans to describe the change of matter or the occurrence of events.

As Lily embraced and understood the new knowledge revealed to her, the sunrise and sunset began to fade—phasing into their respective timelines.

That was when the truth dawned upon Lily.

010 could freely traverse time, not because it had mastered control over time. Rather, it had merely mastered control over itself.

Time doesn't exist. It only comes into existence when one needs an anchor. When one doesn't, it ceases to exist.

She also realized that despite the vast knowledge, they were merely a key to open a door. Behind that door was everything—the ultimate "truth."

Now that she held the key in her hand, she only had to open the door.

"Lily! Hold on! Don't forget our goal! You can already control time. That's enough!" Sparkle cried out.

However, Lily could no longer hear her. The Lily of the past was completely gone. All that remained now was a puppet guided by mere instinct.

And the temptation of "truth" was one that no being could resist. None.

Just as Lily was about to take the final step to open the door, the "key" in her hand was suddenly taken away without any warning.

Time lurched backward.

Everything that she had absorbed into her mind was being pulled out. The old Lily returned once again. The one who had died in the pursuit of knowledge now slowly returned to life.

"What's going on? Why? What was that?" Lily could feel that her sunlight had illuminated something within her vicinity. Something that was drifting at the edge of reality.

It was a long stretch of scenes, a tangled chaos from overlapping dimensions and worlds. There was too much information twisted within it. Despite holding the "key," Lily could barely decipher a sliver—a single thread at the edge of the maelstrom.

And that was merely because a familiar silhouette had caught her attention. It was Charles.

Infant Charles—abandoned in a bamboo basket, his tiny body was shivering, and his lips were blue in the cold.

A dirt-stained Charles—dressed in a ragged, oversized top was standing on tiptoe to rummage through a trash bin.

Nine-year-old Charles—collapsed on the floor and bloody with bruises. Yet, he stood guard in front of a woman, and his eyes were burning with determination.

Teen Charles—wrapping an arm around a woman's alluring curve, he raised a gun in the other hand and casually pulled the trigger.

Sailor Charles—His back was hunched as he scrolled through the photos on his phone while tears silently slid down his cheeks.

Captain Charles—Leading his crew, he stood valiant at the very front in the battle against monsters...

And the scenes went on and on. Lily recognized some of them, while she couldn't recognize the others.

Every version of Charles interwove into a spiraling, twisting line. But this was just one line out of the many lines that rippled across the entity in front of her.

But soon, a new change happened. As the "key" slowly disappeared, and Lily's consciousness returned to normal, these scenes gradually collapsed into flesh. The streams of memory fused together and morphed into severed limbs and pulsing sinew with writhing tentacles.

When all of those things eventually collapsed into mangled flesh, Lily finally saw the entity that had taken away her "key."

Droplets of green pus dripped from its body. Giant, yellow eyes bulged and squeezed against each other. Writhing tentacles extended from the layers of scales and wrinkled skin. All of them came together to form a massive, spindle-shaped abomination.

Now, Lily truly understood why Divinities were always described as horrifying and couldn't be written into words. What humans saw was merely a facade of these entities' actual appearances.

The human mind could never perceive what it had never seen. When they came face to face with something they could not understand, their pitiful brains could only attempt to twist the incomprehensible into the closest thing they could recognize—into monsters.

Lily couldn't recognize the Divinity, but Sparkle found it familiar.

With a hint of hesitation, she called out, "Daddy?"

The massive ochre eye embedded in the center of the spindle stirred slightly before turning its gaze onto Lily.

Daddy? Is this really Mr. Charles? The Mr. Charles of the future?

Realisation suddenly dawned upon Lily. No wonder she had seen glimpses of Mr. Charles in this gigantic spindle.

Wait.

Lily tried to recall what Charles had looked like before he had first taken on this horrifying, monstrous form. However, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't recall anything.

Without the "key," she couldn't even remember Charles' true form at all. Even if she was now a Divinity, there was still no exception.

𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

"Daddy, is it really you? You didn't die in the future, right?" Sparkle asked; a glimmer of hope suddenly lit up in her eyes. She extended a dozen tentacles, each one covered with fluorescent green, cross-shaped pupils.

Soon enough, the spindle responded. From all directions, titanic tentacles spanning hundreds of kilometres surged forth and gently wrapped around Lily and Sparkle before drawing them into its body.