Time Twister

The food was prepared in less than an hour, and for the next 30 minutes, Xander continued to eat the chosen dish the two decided to cook.

After eating, Xander headed out to the garden area, sitting in the patio.

He looked around and saw that the plants he placed and cultivated were still the same. The fruits were still hanging on their branches and stems, their flowers in full bloom. The place looked like a fairy tale forest that came to life.

Xander sighed. He was just 7 years old. His 8th birthday was in two months. Since he started school, so many things have happened. Mistakes were done and learned from, some mistakes were repeated.

I feel so old, Xander muttered. Why was he introspecting at such a time, he wondered. Then again, it"s quite helpful in refocusing oneself. The numerous experiences I had with my newfound friends and acquaintances…it"s such a ha.s.sle, yet it brings me some modic.u.m of happiness. Xander paused.

As he paused, the s.p.a.ce around him stilled. The flowing winds and rustling leaves of trees stopped. The chirping birds that were perched on the branches stopped as well. It wasn"t just the garden. The whole villa, with the people working in their posts, talking to one another in the rest area, all stopped moving, their emotions at that time perfectly captured.

However, it didn"t stop there. The whole city was then enveloped by this aura, stopping everything and everyone from moving, existing, and interacting. It began to expand, from the province to the whole country to the whole continent, to the whole planet. However, it didn"t stop. It continued to expand, stopping time for everyone, covering the Galactic Empire, the closest one, before stopping the time in other empires.

The time-stopping sounded alarm bells to everyone, because not only did the material dimension stop, so did the other dimensions in the area. That involved the Dream dimension, Heaven, h.e.l.l, Abyss, Purgatory, LEO, LIBRA, etc. In the area stopped, causing alarm to every powerhouse that was in the area.

Although it might sound that this happened slowly, this happened in a blink of an eye. Those who weren"t affected were the s.p.a.ce-time cultivators that had a comprehension close to that of Xander, as well as G.o.d cultivators close to Void Traveler cla.s.s. Transmigrators who were caught in the time stop couldn"t react, move or say anything whatsoever. Because of the unique blessings that they received, they were able to process thinking, making them aware of the situation, but they weren"t able to do anything else besides that. They couldn"t activate their own innate abilities, making them feel helpless.

The problem was that more than half of the universe"s time stopped, and not even the s.p.a.ce-time cultivators or those powerhouses do anything to restart the time of the universe.

In fact, half of the Cerulean Empire was caught by the time stop, alarming the s.p.a.ce-time cultivators in the area.

No communication within the other half of the universe could be reached. The moment one enters the s.p.a.ce where time stopped, they stopped as well, and pulling them out doesn"t restart their time, scaring those experimenting and chucking them back in, hoping that once the effect wore off, the time would begin again.

Everyone was panicking, as they think that the area where time had stopped would increase once again. They…were not wrong. After a few days of bated breaths, the stopped time encroached 3/4ths of the universe.

After 2 months, 5/6ths of the universe.

After 1 year, the whole universe was at a standstill, except for the s.p.a.ce-time cultivators and near Void Traveler Cla.s.s who could barely move in the area.

This phenomenon continued for a long time, and so many years, decades, and thousands of years pa.s.sed since then. The culprit, however, was still in a trance of his own.

"Time… time is the root of the mind and soul."

"s.p.a.ce… s.p.a.ce is the container where mind and soul form and grow, sprouting into a being of possibilities."

"With order and chaos guiding oneself, the capacity of a being is limitless, but at the same time, limited by oneself."

"One"s body is Order itself, what it can become is chaos. Time and s.p.a.ce aides in creating sense of that Chaos, while Life-Death gives birth to meaning of one"s life. Yin-Yang allows one to realize that meaning, helping s.p.a.ce and time form the structures that would help it make sense of everything. I"ve been looking through things the wrong way since the beginning, haha!" Xander madly laughed, as if a cloud of confusion was cast off.

He viewed life before as something quite useless, wherein one can simply resurrect the dead or bring back a copy of one"s self from the River of Time, skipping their deaths instantly, like nothing had happened.

But the thing is, something did happen. Their deaths did have a meaning in the greater sense of things, for their actual life essence dolls. The repeated weathering and repairing through cycles of life allow it to become as strong as it can be. Although they can"t remember themselves, their life essence dolls remember. It remembers its changes, its injuries, and healing process.

From there on, the Order of how one"s body is formed, and the Chaos of one"s potential of change is actuated. s.p.a.ce and Time gives a manifestation and a progression for the being to follow, but branching out to multiple situations that one can become, and death is just one situation for that. One could even become spirit lifeforms, existing solely in the material reality as a physical manifestation of one"s life essence doll, like his grandpa uncle.

How could the life essence doll manage to retain itself if not for its tens, hundreds, thousands of cycling through the universe, allowing it to become a formidable innate power when combined by one special aspect of a sentient being: The capacity to think, feel, and act. Life-Death elements push oneself to have a meaning in life because that itself is an anchor for oneself as one progresses and manifests in this universe.

But giving it meaning doesn"t make sense if there is no actualization of that meaning; that is where s.p.a.ce-time and yin-yang help one another bring forth that meaning. Do you live to eat? There are different food types, ingredients, cuisines, ideas, mixtures being produced every day in the universe, different flavors, and different markets, making it impossible for one to be completely satisfied and decide, "I have completed my meaning of life" and just die.

Your meaning of life is to become the strongest? There are different kinds of strengths and professions one can be the strongest in. No one can really claim to be the strongest in everything because there will always be something greater, something beyond what we can perceive. Therefore, the meaning of one"s life in this case is a never-ending search for strength and power, or die trying.

For Xander, the introspection brought him to the point of his life: What is his meaning? Is it to live life to the fullest? How is he going to live life to the fullest if he doesn"t even know what standard to use to live life to the fullest?

After this long period of searching, Xander found a temporary answer: One"s meaning in life is the experiences we undergo every single day, every week, every month, every year. To make meaning is to make sure that he was happy, in a state of equilibrium of nothing too little or too much.

Xander let out a sigh, before shouting,

"I have found my meaning!" His voice was full of emotions and of power; at the same time, it seemed to be the key to break the whole universe"s phenomenon of stopped time.

Xander then heard a notification from the System.

"You have frozen the time of the entire universe for a total of 99,999 years. Due to your improved comprehension of the universe, a new interface has been unlocked; you may now communicate with the ordered system of the universe."

Xander was surprised. He didn"t think that what he did would cause such a great effect in the universe. He was just contemplating, hey!

Well.. At least everyone would start at the same time, I guess? No one would notice anything different, hehe, Xander comforted himself.

Wait, what did it mean by the System I could communicate with the Ordered system of the universe? Xander mused, before delving into the interface.

He looked at his stats and skills, and realized that his comprehension for all his elements improved, and saw that at the bottom, there was a tab that wasn"t there before:

Ordered Universe - 25

Number of Calls: 3/infinity (Increases by 1 Every 30 days UTY)

Number of Requests: 3/99 (Increases by 1 Every 300 days UTY)

Number of Messages: 25/infinity (Increases by 1 every time you send/receive a message)

Xander was curious why there were messages already from the Ordered universe, and he began to read through them, and after a while, he broke out in a sweat.

HEY, IDIOT, WHY DID YOU STOP THE TIME? START IT BACK NOW!

d.a.m.n IT, MY UNIVERSAL TIME WILL HAVE TO BE ADJUSTED.

HEY. HEEEEY. WAKE UP, SHEESH.

G.o.d d.a.m.n IT, WHY DID YOU HAVE TO FALL INTO A CONTEMPLATIVE EPIPHANY? SERIOUSLY, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THAT AMADEUS, SENDING SOMEONE LIKE THAT HERE.

FUUUUCK. h.e.l.lOOO, ARE YOU NOT YET AWAKE?

OH, WAIT. CAN HE EVEN COMMUNICATE OR READ MY MESSAGES IN THE FIRST PLACE…?

NAH, IT"S LIKELY HE COULD SEE THIS. AFTER ALL, THAT LIFEFORM CAN TRANSLATE THIS MESSAGE.

AGH ITS BEEN 90000 YEARS. ARE YOU NOT DONE YET.

JEEZ LUISE FINALLY YOU STARTED IT BACK UP.

YOU"RE AN IDIOT.

YES.

YOU ARE AN IDIOT.

…

…

…

…

YOU ARE LUCKY YOU TECHNICALLY HOLD A PART OF ME OR I WOULD ERADICATE YOUR a.s.s COMPLETELY.

DON"T YOU THINK FOR A SECOND I DIDN"T KNOW WHAT YOU DID TO YOUR POCKET s.p.a.cE, WHICH BEGAN TO DEVOUR MY RESOURCES, HMPH! I HAD TO INCREASE MY INTAKE JUST FOR THAT GREEDY b.u.g.g.e.r!

UGH, WHY AM I STILL SENDING MESSAGES. MAYBE HE REALLY CAN"T SEE THESE.

MEH, WHATEVER. I AM BORED SO I"MMA DO WHAT I WANT.

THIS IDIOT DESERVES TO BE DISTURBED. I COULD HANDLE SMALL SCALE SITUATIONS SUCH AS USING A VOID KING-RANK SPELL, SINCE IT WOULD RETURN EVERYTHING BACK TO NORMAL IF HE WILLED IT.

BUT THIS IS ONE OF THE SITUATIONS WHERE HE NEEDS TO BE PUNISHED.

HMM, I SHOULD ASK WHITE AND BLACK ABOUT THIS GUY. ACCORDING TO THEM, HE COMMANDED THE LIFEFORM TO INFILTRATE THEIR DOMAINS, HAHA!

UGH, I"M HUNGRY… WAIT. I CAN"T GET HUNGRY.

MAYBE I"M JUST MAD AT HIM, THAT"S WHY I"M MANIFESTING LIKE THIS.

d.a.m.n PROGRAMMING, I"LL HAVE TO START THE MULTI-THREAD PROCESSING TO COMPLETE THE ERRORS AND ADJUST THE TIME-SYNC IN ALL DIMENSIONS…

UGH YOU ARE A PAIN IN MY EXISTENCE, MAH DUDE.

Xander, hesitatingly, tried to send back a message.

"Um…h.e.l.lo Universe-25… how are you doing..?"

Immediately, messages began to come in.

YOU DIMWIT, FINALLY YOU CAN READ MY MESSAGES.

YOU SCREWED UP BIG TIME! EVEN IF YOU"RE FAVORED BY AMADEUS, YOU"RE JUST A PAIN AND ADDING TO MY WORKLOAD!

"Uh…who"s Amadeus?"

… NEVERMIND THAT. WAIT, I"LL HAVE TO ADD YOU TO THE GROUP CHAT WITH WHITE AND BLACK.

The moment he received that message, the System immediately beeped, sending him a message.

"You now have access to the Almighty and the Fallen. You may now directly message or call them, or request from them."

"You have been forcefully added to the connected communication channel of the Ordered Universe, the Almighty, and the Fallen."

Under the tab, there were two additional sections that appeared.

Almighty-U25

Number of Calls: 3/infinity (Increases by 1 Every 30 days UTY)

Number of Requests: 3/99 (Increases by 1 Every 300 days UTY)

Number of Messages: 0/infinity (Increases by 1 every time you send/receive a message)

Fallen-U25

Number of Calls: 3/infinity (Increases by 1 Every 30 days UTY)

Number of Requests: 3/99 (Increases by 1 Every 300 days UTY)

Number of Messages: 0/infinity (Increases by 1 every time you send/receive a message)

Trinity Chat-U25

Number of Messages: 1...0/infinity (Increases by 1 every time you send/receive a message)

When I checked the logs, there was a long list of conversations happening between the trio, and I immediately skipped to the recent updates.

YO, U25. WHAT HAPPENED? WHY DID THE SYSTEM FREEZE?

DON"T BLAME ME WHITE, BLAME ONE OF THE THINGS INSERTED BY OUR GREAT G.o.d AMADEUS.

UGH. TOTES NOT COOL. I WAS ABOUT TO WIN THE STARRING CONTEST. WHY DID THE TIME START AGAIN?

SHADDUP BLACK! ANYWAYS, I FORCEFULLY ADDED THE CULPRIT INTO THIS CHAT SO WE CAN AT LEAST "ADVISE" HIM BEFOREHAND IF THE SITUATION HE IS HEADING TO IS DETRIMENTAL FOR THE UNIVERSE AS A WHOLE.

"h.e.l.lo, seniors. Sorry for the trouble I have caused. ＿￣○" Xander responded, adding an emoji of him kneeling down to them. Hopefully, they got his intentions.

OH, YOU"RE THAT DUDE? YOU HACKED OUR MAINFRAMES FAM. THAT FEELING WAS SO INTRUSIVE. LIKE, I WAS STRIPPED NAKED. NOT THAT I DIDN"T LIKE IT…

NOT THE POINT TODAY, BLACK. THE POINT IS WHY DID AMADEUS EVEN GIVE HIM SUCH A COMPANION? ISN"T THOSE THINGS RARE IN THE GREAT VOID? HEY, U25, DO YOU KNOW WHY?

THE HECK? HOW WOULD I KNOW, WHITE, I"M NOT THAT IMPULSIVE.

ANYWAYS, YOU KNOW HIM ALREADY SO NO NEED FOR FURTHER INTRODUCTION.

MR. IDIOT, PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT NEXT TIME YOU PLAN TO AFFECT THE WHOLE UNIVERSE, SEND US A MESSAGE SO WE CAN ACTUALLY CREATE A SANDBOX FOR YOU TO BE IN FOR A WHILE.

YOUR POWERS ARE GROWING EXPONENTIALLY, AND CURRENTLY A Ha.s.sLE FOR US.

"Ok. Will do. Sorry for the additional trouble. How do I address you, seniors?"

CALL ME ALMIGHTY, J, OR SOURCE.

CALL ME FALLEN, LUCY, OR STAR. BUT FOR YOU, YOU CAN CALL ME DADDY u003c3

When Xander saw Lucy reply to him like that, he consciously shivered, yet he was also puzzled. He had a dad, why would he call another being his daddy?

CALL ME U25. STOP FLIRTING BLACK, G.o.dd.a.m.n IT. THE GUY"S JUST 7 YEARS OLD!

WELL, TECHNICALLY, HE"S MORE THAN TEN MILLION YEARS OLD WITH HIS s.p.a.cE-TIME HIJINKS THOUGH…

SHUT IT, WHITE, I"M BASING THIS ON THE CURRENT SANDBOX REALITY WHERE THE KID IS IN. HE IS JUST 7 YEARS OLD. NO PEDOPHILIA ALLOWED IN MY UNIVERSE!

…FINE, SHEESH. I WAS JUST TEASING THE KID. HOWEVER, BOY, MY OFFER STANDS IN THE FUTURE, OK? u003c3

"…"

At that point, Xander closed the chat and returned back to the present situation. With his increase in comprehension of all origin elements, he could perceive the inner workings of the universe adjusting, fixing itself from the damage he had caused with his universe-wide time stop.

It was minute, but the fabric of s.p.a.ce and time was readjusting itself into a set structure, indicating that even the UTY of the universe has something to base it on.

The other s.p.a.ce-time magicians and half-step to Void Traveler rank, seeing that time and s.p.a.ce were functioning normally now, realized with their current connection with the universe, the universe was adjusting on its own, fixing the disjointed time and s.p.a.ce.

The s.p.a.ce-time cultivators took this opportunity to meditate on its profound mysteries, to further improve their comprehension of this origin element. After all, this was a rare opportunity. In fact, if some of the sages half-step to G.o.d cla.s.s would meditate on this situation, they might get the last bit of understanding they needed to establish their own universe.

Anyways, going back to Eteria, Xander was immersing himself in understanding how the U25, J, and Lucy were fixing the problem. Huh, it seemed interesting. If he was to describe how they were doing it, it is like manually updating the s.p.a.ce and time settings in every section of the universe simultaneously. They weren"t attempting to update the time as a whole because it would screw up some special structures inside the universe. So although it was simultaneously done, there was a lot of fine-tuning done per region.

In fact, the planets he landed on near Cerulean had their time speed return to normal, meaning the special trait he placed as a compensation method was removed.

Oh well, I should just focus on my own stuff, for now, Xander mumbled.

He then headed to the laboratory and saw that there were still a lot of other planets and galaxies being formed. Luckily, there weren"t any black holes or wormholes developing, as these would be quite a ha.s.sle to remove.

He began to check on the Concept trees, checking if they had bloomed as well besides the Dream, Life and Creation trees.

Order, Dimension, Chaos, and Evolution trees were already forming flowers, but like usual, the Destruction Tree only has withered leaves on its branches.

With the two types of seeds that he bought, he transported 2 planets to the area, placing two of each seed per planet. He also had a laboratory set-up in these two planets, as well as a farm garden and mountain deposits and areas where elemental crystals are rapidly compressed and acc.u.mulated.

The planet with the Time seed was placed under accelerated time, allowing it to proceed with 1 second: 10,000 years.

The planet with the Emotion seed, on the other hand, had to be modified to have a higher concentration of emotion and mind elements in the area.

He didn"t plan on adding these planets into the foundation of the Laboratory as they were not stable enough.

He began to delve into the mysteries of the Immortal quality elemental crystals and the wisp of Immortal flame for the next 360,000 years inside the laboratory, or 5 hours outside.

It was 200,000 years after that he finally had a breakthrough on how they were formed and produced naturally or artificially.

These are known to be Immortal quality elemental crystals because they actually began to contain nomological truths, albeit in small, nearly-undetectable amounts.

However, they were there, much higher than the lower quality elemental crystals, with the highest transcendental quality elemental crystal containing 0.0000000000000012% nomological truths that are barely comprehensible, and detrimental even, if one attempted to comprehend them. Once it reached the level of Immortal quality elemental crystals, however, it can contain as low as 0.000001% to 1.5% complete comprehension.

It"s possible, of course, as the Eternal items, that the complete comprehension it contained, one already knows. Because of this, the formed immortal elemental crystals are never quite the same. They vary in small aspects, just like cultivators in their path to G.o.dhood and beyond.

One of the purposes of an immortal-quality elemental crystal is that it can supply a Divine-rank or higher matrix spell of its own, the power of the spell depends on the number of elemental crystals in grams. Another benefit was that it can subst.i.tute a plant material of the same element, limited up to Cla.s.s 11.

When Xander looked back into the past of the elemental crystal, the aspects of collection, acc.u.mulation, compression and expression of the element were observed. The last step, expression, was vital for an elemental crystal to be considered immortal quality. In fact, they needed to be near an Eternal item for them to form after hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years.

Xander also discovered how one can artificially produce them: Random bursts of elemental power in the targeted areas, these bursts representing different representations of the target element, before being compressed and allowed to acc.u.mulate. The speed of acc.u.mulation can be improved by adding the Eternal item/s of the specific element/s one desires in the vicinity.

He began to modify the areas in the different planets he was controlling, adding eternal items here and there of that specific element, mixing and matching certain types. He did plan to create some mixed immortal elemental crystals to give as gifts.

This brought up two interesting topics for Xander: Can magic crystals gain sentience though since they are structured similarly to how a sentient being progresses in the path of cultivation? At the same time, can he create ready to deploy spells, by etching them into the immortal crystals and activating them later on? Xander decided to place these two topics in the back burner for now, before resuming research on the wisp of Immortal flame.

For the next 160,000 years, that was his focus. From that wisp, he tested it in every possible test he could think of, even attempting to view how the flame was born.