Chapter 144: The Reveal
Translator: Pluto Editor: Vermillion
"So... you’re saying that Xueqin noticed that something was wrong anyway?" Lin Sanjiu said with some awkwardness as she took a large step, climbing the stairs two at a time.
"Yeah! She started grumbling about it midway to our destination. She would definitely come here herself if she didn’t need Bai Xiaoke to help her move." Li Tao was short so she had to move much faster to match Lin Sanjiu’s speed. Her bright, puppy-like raven eyes showed a light-hearted cheerfulness, "She actually wanted me to look for you and then use whatever means to bring you back."
"Huh!" Lin Sanjiu was reassured when she found out that the operation outside had only been ongoing for less than an hour. She couldn’t help finding Xueqin, who was at the other side of the city, rather amusing. She used her [Ability Polishing Agent] to light the next few steps ahead and continued, "I have been through all those dangers she warned about. It is just a pocket dimension. Look, we have already climbed so many stories, and we’re still fine."
Lin Sanjiu was a bit wrong about her description, as the black tower technically only had two stories, the ground floor, and the top floor. The middle portion of the tower was just an almost endless flight of stairs. Naturally, if the power source was really located in the black tower, it could only be on the top floor. Both women had already climbed up four to five segments of the spiral staircase but they were still unable to see the top floor.
"By the way, what was the pocket dimension like? How did you escape?"
Lin Sanjiu wasn’t quite sure how to answer Li Tao. She hemmed and hawed before she turned to look at Li Tao and suddenly smiled, "Actually, I don’t know… Why don’t I tell you what happened? Maybe, you might unravel what have transpired. Two heads are better than one!"
After that, she recounted her experience in the pocket dimension, providing Li Tao with as many details as she could. As the storylines and timelines within the fairytale-themed pocket dimension were in such a mess, Lin Sanjiu found it hard to even put it in words. Unbelievably, Li Tao actually understood her confusing narration.
"I think I escaped because of dumb luck. No matter how hard I think, I can’t make sense of that pocket dimension..." Lin Sanjiu confessed her perplexity under the glimmering silver light and their steady footsteps.
Li Tao remained quiet for a while. She seemed to be stumped as well. As Lin Sanjiu focused the light ahead, she couldn’t see Li Tao’s expression. After some time, she finally spoke softly, "It’s quite interesting that the age of the three main characters contradicts their existence on the same timeline…"
"What are your thoughts?" Lin Sanjiu asked inquisitively.
They were still quite a distance away from the top of the tower. To be on the safe side, Lin Sanjiu didn’t use her maximum speed to race up the tower. Right now, she was more than willing to hear Li Tao’s analysis. Li Tao slowed down her steps subconsciously and laughed a little hesitantly, "This is just my thoughts, I don’t know if it’s right."
"It’s alright. Just speak your mind."
"I think that it is fundamentally wrong to use the assumption that past events affect future events," Li Tao already caught Lin Sanjiu’s attention with her first sentence, "I think that all three stories were actually independent, and have nothing to do with each other."
"Huh? How do you explain the prince’s death and Lila’s mirror?"
Li Tao seemed to realize that it might be quite difficult for her to express her explanation. After thinking for a bit, she asked, "Do you have a piece of paper?"
Lin Sanjiu stopped and looked through her deck of cards. Most of the items she had were things salvaged from Hyperthermal Hell and not many paper-made products could survive the high temperature in that world. In the end, she tore a piece of toilet paper and handed it to Li Tao.
"I need three pieces," Li Tao replied.
Lin Sanjiu froze for a moment, feeling as if she almost sensed something but failed to understand anything in the end. She tore off another two more pieces of toilet paper and changed the toilet roll back into a card. After that, she packed and prepared to store her cards. Suddenly, she noticed her Diary Card.
"Ah, isn’t that my super-cute girl!" A single line appeared on the card.
Before Li Tao noticed the disgraceful card, Lin Sanjiu quickly stored it into her body. Next, she watched Li Tao as if nothing had happened. Li Tao held two pieces of toilet paper in her left hand thoughtfully and used her right hand to place the final piece beneath both of them.
Now, the three toilet paper created a model with a top, middle and bottom level.
"Each of this pieces of paper represents a story." Li Tao cleared her throat and spoke excitedly as though she enjoyed this process of revealing this mystery, "They are supposed to be on parallel planes so they can’t interfere with each other and they each have their individual time streams."
"The story which covers the longest time frame, and also the story with the fastest flow of time, is Bluebeard’s story," as she said this, she took the top-most piece of paper and embossed a short line on the paper followed by a dot using her fingernails, she then repeated this a few more times[1]." Bluebeard met the fairy when he was 7 and only married Lila when he was almost 40, there are almost 30 years in between.
Lin Sanjiu nodded her head to show that she understood that point.
"Next, it is Red Riding Hood’s story," Li Tao drew slightly long lines and added fewer dots. "There is about twenty years from Emma’s past to when Red Riding Hood appears."
"So, the story with the slowest flow of time must be Cinderella’s story?" Lin Sanjiu couldn’t help adding.
"That’s right. When the two stories… Um, you can just look at these two toilet paper… move forward about ten over years, only a few months would have passed in Cinderella’s timeline." After she said that, Li Tao drew a very long line a dot and another long line. The length of the paper only allowed two long lines to be drawn.
She stacked the three pieces of paper together once again. But this time around, she took a hairpin from her hair and aimed at the paper using the sharp end of her hairpin.
"Now, I am the Old Man Fairy. I deceived Cinderella and got her approval to create a few holes in her layer of paper."
Lin Sanjiu faintly grasped the concept that Li Tao was trying to show her and felt the hair on her back standing.
"This dot represents the segment of time when the prince was looking for Cinderella," Li Tao used her hairpin and perforate the dot on the bottom piece of paper. She reached the second layer and moved it towards another dot, "It coincides with the time when Red Riding Hood meets the werewolf.
"Now, the microorganisms on the surface of the toilet paper ‘leaks’ into the second layer when the holes are created. You could say that the ‘werewolf’ germ had now contaminated the Cinderella paper or the ‘prince’ germ is now on the Little Red Riding Hood paper. Thus, the characters and scenarios on two different timelines are blended at these points."
"So I am also a… germ which can travel between the three pieces of paper." Lin Sanjiu stared at the toilet paper and laughed wryly as the holes created were not aligned, and the papers were a little twisted. Under the dim silver light, they seemed to possess their own little lives.
Li Tao nodded with a serious expression, "As shown, you saw the weird occurrences due to the multiple holes within the layers. For example, Bluebeard of the past and future can exist in the palace at the same time."
Li Tao pulled a single strand of hair from her head and poke her hair through two dots that were far apart from each other. She then pulled the two ends of her hair together and pull them through the single hole on Cinderella’s paper. When she pulled her hair together, Bluebeard’s paper immediately crumpled together so that they converged at a single point.
"That was why the old man told Bluebeard that eighteen years are much shorter than you think!" Lin Sanjiu muttered half-stunned and half in awe.
Li Tao smiled faintly, "That’s right. Once you realized the essence that the stories exist on three different layers, you will know that there is a single action that can guarantee the survival of all main characters. As you are just an outsider, you cannot create holes in each layer like the Old Man Fairy. On top of that, some of the ‘intersections’, let’s call it that, might not connect all three layers.
"You mean the pocket dimension lied?"
"No, that stone tablet didn’t lie." Li Tao waved her hand. She squished the three pieces of paper into a ball and threw it aside. "You could say that there was a red herring."
"A red herring?" Lin Sanjiu parroted as she followed behind Li Tao, climbing up the steps slowly.
"It’s simple. If Red Riding Hood is the main character of the Red Riding Hood story and Cinderella is the main character in Cinderella, then what makes you think Lila is the main character in Bluebeard’s story?"
Li Tao’s gentle, subtle voice rang out softly in the darkness like a gentle tide upon the walls of the tower— ironically, the meaning of the words were like explosives to Lin Sanjiu.
"Because…" Lin Sanjiu wanted to say something but she was stuck because she didn’t know why she assumed that Lila was the main character.
"Shouldn’t Bluebeard be the main character in the story of Bluebeard?" Li Tao chuckled.
"But, the stone tablet mentioned that all three characters were in grave danger so I have to save them. At that point, when Lila saw Bluebeard, she was in danger—"
"So, what did you plan to do then?" Li Tao turned to look at her, with the dim silver light around them.
"I decided to kill Bluebeard." Lin Sanjiu replied mindlessly. She understood now.
With that being said, things were now very clear for Lin Sanjiu. If Lin Sanjiu didn’t kill Bluebeard, it automatically counted as her saving him. However, no one directly involved in that moment would have thought of that.
"You can say that the entire pocket dimension is a trap but it is useless against you," Li Tao laughed quietly. "Other people wouldn’t leave Bluebeard to his own devices if they considered the situation. After all, he seems like the most suspicious person. Once a person decided on this, it would be difficult to make a different choice. However, for a person like you who uses her muscles before her brain, it is apparently easier for you to efficiently solve the puzzle."
Lin Sanjiu really couldn’t decide if Li Tao was praising or mocking her. After a while, she commented softly, "No, if it was you, you would quickly see through the trick. You are really good, you managed to analyze the situation by just hearing what I said…"
Li Tao quickly felt a little embarrassed and answered, "Huh? Nah, it is just that I can see it a little clearer as an observer… If I really entered that pocket dimension, I might not be able to escape."
"I have another two questions for you." Lin Sanjiu suddenly said.
"What are they?"
"Firstly, when you first escaped the pocket dimension in this black tower, what was it like?" Lin Sanjiu didn’t use a demanding attitude but said that casually.
Li Tao who was ahead of her suddenly stopped. She stood still in the darkness and did not turn around.
"For my second question... Your name is not Li Tao. Who are you?"