Qing’s eyes snapped open as he felt himself standing somewhere else, his eyes instinctively looking around before his mind could even settle on the last thought he had. The moment his vision adjusted, his pupils shook as he found himself standing among countless people, people of Earth, and in a place which would generally be called a Mall.
The familiar surroundings immediately made his mind go blank for a brief moment because this was not the Azure Heaven Realm, nor was this the abandoned hut where he had been cultivating.
The architecture, the clothing, the countless screens displaying advertisements, and the faint mechanical sounds coming from all directions were things he had not seen since his previous life. Yet before he could properly process any of it, a familiar voice suddenly reached his ears.
"Neo! Neo! What’s gotten into you? We will be late for the Association’s Awakening ceremony!" Qing immediately turned toward the voice, and the moment his eyes landed on the female figure standing in front of him, his entire body froze.
His eyes remained fixed on her for several seconds, unable to move away as his heartbeat suddenly began rising at an alarming rate. A memory suddenly flooded into his mind, a memory that had been buried deep inside his mind ever since he awakened as Qing Lan.
In that memory, the same woman standing before him had been surrounded by Demons, and he had watched helplessly as she was eaten alive while he desperately tried to reach her. His hands began trembling as that memory resurfaced, his breathing becoming heavy and his pupils shaking uncontrollably as he stared at the woman who should have been dead.
Before he could even understand what was happening, the woman stepped forward and hugged him tightly. Her sudden movement snapped him out of the memory, although his body remained tense as he felt her familiar warmth against him.
"N-Neo! What happened to you suddenly? Why are you looking at me as if you saw a nightmare?!" Her weak and worried voice reached his ears, and the concern in it was so familiar that it made his heart tighten even further.
Neolan slowly lowered his gaze toward her as she pulled herself away from the hug, and his eyes remained fixed on her face as though he were afraid that she would disappear the moment he looked away. His lips trembled slightly before a name finally escaped his mouth, "A-Alice?"
The name came out almost as a whisper, yet the moment he said it, everything inside his mind became even clearer.
This was Alice, the woman he had loved in his previous life, the same woman whose death had remained one of the deepest wounds in his heart even after everything he had endured. He had watched her die once, and after countless years of fighting Demons, that memory had never disappeared from his mind.
Yet...now she was standing directly in front of him, alive, healthy, and looking at him with the same expression he remembered from his youth. Neolan’s mind immediately returned to the message he had seen before his transfer, and his Ultimate Comprehension began connecting the scattered pieces of information together. ’W-Wait... Does that mean...?!’
’System!’ Neolan immediately called out, wanting confirmation for the theory that had suddenly appeared in his mind.
He had already experienced something impossible once, having transmigrated into the body of Qing Lan and then encountered his Master at a point in time before she had ever met him in his previous life.
Now he had been brought back to Earth and found himself standing beside Alice, a person who should have been dead according to his memories. The possibility that he had not simply transferred between two worlds, but had somehow returned to an earlier point in both worlds, was the only explanation that made sense.
His Ultimate Comprehension made him reach the same conclusion, but Neolan still wanted to hear the answer directly from the System. To his surprise, the translucent System Window immediately appeared before him.
[Sign-In Available Host!]
[Would you like to Sign-In? Y/N]
Neolan ignored the Sign-In notification for the moment because there was something far more important on his mind.
’Let’s set that aside for now. Please tell me if I have regressed in both worlds?’ His question was direct, and he waited without taking his eyes away from the System Window. The System remained silent for a brief moment, as if processing the question before finally giving him an answer.
Although the response was extremely simple, the moment Neolan read it, he understood it instantly.
[Paradox Sign-In System has two functions: Sign-In, Transfer between Earth and the cultivation world.]
That was all the System said before becoming silent again.
He did not bother asking another question as he already had enough information.
The System had never directly said that it had regressed him, but the circumstances themselves had already provided the answer. He had returned to Earth at the same time that he had returned to an earlier point in the cultivation world, and Alice being alive was proof enough that this Earth was not the same point in time he had left behind.
Neolan finally released a slow breath and turned his attention back toward Alice, who was still watching him with an expression filled with confusion. His gaze lingered on her face for another moment before he finally forced himself to act normally.
He exhaled a long breath and spoke, "Hah, sorry I suddenly went out of it. What were you just saying right now?" He tried to make his voice sound casual as he covered up his sudden behavior as nothing more than spacing out for a moment.
Alice continued staring at his face for a few seconds, clearly unconvinced by how strange he had suddenly acted, but she eventually sighed and shook her head.
"You always make me worry, you know? Sigh, we were going to the Association today after shopping a bit, but now that it’s already time, we couldn’t do any actual shopping at all." Her words made Neolan glance around the Mall again, and only then did he notice the things she had been carrying before his arrival and the time they had already wasted.
Looking at her slightly annoyed expression, he couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of familiarity because this ordinary moment was something he had once taken completely for granted.
Neolan looked at her pouting expression as she turned her head sideways, and for a moment, he became completely speechless.
He had spent years fighting Demons, watched countless people die, and eventually reached the point where he could stand against the Demon King, yet right now he found himself struggling to process something as simple as Alice being alive. Slowly, another memory surfaced as it finally clicked to him why this circumstance felt familiar.
This was the same day when he and Alice were supposed to attend the Association’s Awakening ceremony alongside many other Noble children and awaken their Astrine Blades for the first time. Neolan’s expression softened as he realized just how far back he had returned. ’I am back to my twenty, so I regressed fifteen years back in time...’