“If you truly wish to thank me, show me more interesting work. It’d be best if you could make a complete mess of history.” The starlight flickered in anticipation of the future.
Zu An was perplexed. Are you the Deity of Chaos and Enigma or the Deity of Entertainment?
Worried that the other party could read his mind, he quickly halted his train of thought and instead tried to gather some information about Jiang Luofu. “O great deity, I have a companion who seems to have been summoned by a true deity. May I ask who that deity is?”
“Oh? Someone from a border world like yours caught the eye of those fellows?” Mi Li was surprised.
Zu An recounted Jiang Luofu’s mysterious circumstances before her disappearance.
The starlight shimmered as if checking on something. A while later, the voice said, “I get it.”
Zu An was overjoyed. “May I know who summoned my friend?”
“You’ll know when the time comes,” Mi Li replied.
Zu An nearly choked on his saliva. Ugh, another riddler! “May I know when the right time will be?”
“You said something that I deeply agree with. We shouldn’t confuse the position of the master and the servant. I granted you power and bestowed you artifacts, and here you are, demanding that I find someone for you. Are you the master here, or am I?” The voice turned chilly.
“Of course you are!” Zu An secretly wiped away cold sweat. These deities are unpredictable!
“It’s good that you know. Go alter more entertaining history and satisfy me, and I'll consider telling you,” Mi Li said nonchalantly.
“Yes!” Zu An tried his luck. “Do you have artifacts that can travel through time? That would make it much easier for me to alter history.”
With such a tool, I could return to the past and reunite with the Mermaid Queen and the Goddess of Wu Mountain. He recalled Shang Hongyu’s anger and added another name to the list. And Xihe too.
“Hmph! Trying to use official work to fulfill your private agenda? I don’t care which women you copulate with. As long as you offer me enough entertaining stories, I can let you copulate with all the beautiful women in the myriad worlds.” Mi Li coldly harrumphed.
Cold sweat rained down Zu An. I nearly forgot she can read my thoughts. How am I supposed to guard against this? He had an overactive brain. More often than not, random thoughts would pop uncontrollably into his mind. And the way she phrased it is bizarre too. It’s almost as if she’s rearing a pet.
“Time-traveling tools fall under a special category. Unlike Time... Hmph, there is much you can’t know about yet. All you need to know is that you don’t need to travel back in time to change history. Everything you do has the possibility to change history. Your trip to Dreamland is a good opportunity. You have to go, and you'd better make it a big event for me. Otherwise, I have no use for you.” The voice gradually faded as if it was leaving.
Zu An barely blinked before the starlight around him disappeared without a trace. He had returned to the ocean, and Shang Hongyu was worriedly tugging his arm. “Ah Zu? Ah Zu?”
“What’s wrong?” Zu An snapped out of his daze.
“I should be asking you that. You suddenly stopped moving,” Shang Hongyu huffed.
Zu An widened his eyes. “How long was I gone for?”
“Not long. Around two to three breaths. But that would have been long enough for an enemy to take you down,” Shang Hongyu replied.
“I was summoned by a deity.” Zu An realized that only his consciousness had been summoned, but he wondered why time hadn’t halted. Won’t I be in danger if the deity abruptly summons me while I'm fighting a life-and-death battle with an enemy? I should ask how she handles such a situation.
“Ah?” Shang Hongyu was stunned. She hadn’t expected to receive such a shocking answer. “What happened?”
“Let’s find Liuyu first, then we’ll talk together.”
Shang Liuyu was still feeling embarrassed and didn’t want to face them, but upon hearing about the otherworldly intruder and Zu An’s meeting with a deity, she hurriedly opened her doors.
Zu An proceeded to share the story of their encounter with the Mirror Scribe and his subsequent audience with a true deity.
The two women were horrified. “We mustn’t carelessly speak of the deities in the future.”
Zu An chuckled as he took out the Spring Autumn Brush and Time Annal. “It turned out to be a blessing in disguise.”
The two women were stunned when they learned about his new ability. It transcended the possibilities of their current world.
Zu An wondered whether to take this chance to write about a steamy night with the two sisters... but he quickly stifled that thought. It was only a matter of time before that came to be, so there was no need to rely on such cheats. Besides, he didn’t know whether writing such nonsense in the Time Annal was considered blasphemy. It would be terrible if he angered Mi Li with that.
“While becoming a deity’s envoy comes with huge merits, it also means that you’ll be embroiled in the conflicts between true deities. That could potentially put you in more danger in the future,” Shang Liuyu reminded him. “Ah Zu, I know you’re determined to head to Dreamland to save the others, but you'll need to avoid flaunting your position. We know too little about the other worlds; we don’t even know what enemies the Deity of Chaos and Enigma has.”
Zu An finally calmed down from his excitement. “Thank you for your reminder, big sister Shang. I was too optimistic earlier.”
They also discussed the potential dangers in Dreamland, but they had too little information to work with. In the end, they could only equip him with a couple of artifacts and pills from the Dragon Palace. Zu An left a few days later. He didn’t know when Dreamland would open, so he needed to make arrangements for his absence.
Before he left, Shang Liuyu gave him a suit of scale mail, saying, “Ah Zu, my big sister and I wove this armor out of our Mermaid race’s most valuable Heart Guarding Scales. We already intended to do so when you headed to the Monster World back then, but it’s only recently that we finally finished working on it.”
Zu An took the scale mail. Iridescent light flowed through its scales; it looked gorgeous. Despite being made out of scales, it was as smooth and flexible as thin silk, and it didn’t weigh much either.
“How fragrant.” He lifted the scale mail to his nose to take a whiff, an action that caused the two sisters to blush.
Shang Hongyu gently smacked him. “What are you doing? This scale mail is made not just from our Heart Guarding Scales but the ones left behind by generations of Mermaid Queens. You’re blaspheming our ancestors.”
Zu An quickly reined in his smile and apologized to the two ladies. He had once received a scale from a certain Mermaid Queen that allowed him to withstand a fatal attack once. This chainmail, on the other hand, was made out of the most important scales from many generations of Mermaid Queens. Its defensive prowess had to be at a ridiculous level.
The two sisters had practically emptied the Mermaid race’s treasury for him. He was moved. How can I repay their sentiments?
But there were too many things he needed to do, so their time together was destined to be limited. He held the two ladies tightly in his embrace. The two also knew that it could be a long time before they met again, so they tightly embraced him back.