Chapter 258 : Chapter 258
Chapter 258. Temporal Retrocognition
The old man’s sinister tone made the assistants jolt in fright. They shrank their necks and nodded frantically.
The group passed through heavily guarded corridors and finally stopped before a massive iron door.
This had originally been an underground storage room, but now a handwritten wooden sign hung on it—
【Temporary Biological Sample Processing Center】
Before they even entered, an overpowering stench of formalin mixed with a sulfurous, rotten-egg reek seeped out through the crack in the door and hit them in the face.
Moros drew a deep breath, arranged the standard smile he had cultivated through long years in official circles, and raised a hand to knock.
Knock, knock.
“Come in.”
The voice was cool and flat, betraying no emotion.
Moros pushed the door open, and the scene before him nearly made the assistants behind him vomit on the spot.
Under the dim yellow glow of magitech lamps, an expensive redwood desk had been repurposed as a temporary dissection table. Lying across it was a large mass of dark purple flesh—part of the stomach remains of the unknown sixth-tier magical beast that had been slain on the battlefield earlier.
It was still moving.
That chunk of dead flesh seemed to possess a will of its own, twitching neurotically as purple-black slime continuously seeped from the severed edges.
And Logaris West, the academy prodigy of rumor, was standing beside the table.
He wore a long white lab coat that had once been immaculate, but was now spattered with purple blood. Perched on the bridge of his nose were those signature gold-rimmed glasses. In his hand he held a mithril scalpel as thin as a cicada’s wing, moving with such elegance that it looked as though he were slicing a steak.
Moros felt his scalp go numb. He had seen great scenes before, but this sort of gruesome spectacle genuinely dealt psychic damage.
“Ahem... Professor Logaris.”
Moros gave a dry cough, his wrinkled face piling into a smile that was both restrained and faintly ingratiating. “I have long admired your great name, truly. I am Moros. By order of His Majesty and the Privy Council, I came to... ahem... express concern for the soldiers on the front line, and at the same time conduct a routine little investigation.”
Logaris slowly removed his glasses and took out a piece of velvet cloth to wipe them.
“Express concern?” Logaris blew lightly across the lens. “You came empty-handed?”
The smile on Moros’s face stiffened for a moment. That opening line was not following the usual script at all.
“Well... the supplies are still being unloaded from the airship.” Moros rubbed his hands together and decided to skip this nutritionally void small talk. The underground room was full of cold drafts, and he kept feeling a chill at the back of his neck.
“Professor, let us speak plainly. As for Prince Carlisle’s disappearance, the Royal Capital is... under tremendous pressure.”
Moros weighed every word carefully, terrified that one wrong syllable might set off this powder keg. “Those noble lords are demanding an explanation no matter what. We have no choice. We need to conduct a... ah... verification of the timeline for all relevant personnel.”
“Verification?”
Logaris put his glasses back on. A cold gleam flashed across the lenses, concealing the fleeting amusement in his eyes.
He casually tossed the scalpel into a tray, where it landed with a sharp clang.
“You mean the Royal Capital suspects me?”
The question was not loud, but in an instant it dragged the temperature in the room down to freezing.
“No, no, no! Absolutely not!” Moros waved both hands frantically, his survival instinct surging to the limit. “This is just procedure! You know how those noble lords are—if they do not see a divination report stamped and sealed, they will never shut up. I am only a hired hand myself. Please, just treat it as helping this old man out and grant me this favor?”
Moros was suffering bitterly inside.
One foot of his body was already in the grave, and he was a Prophecy School mage to boot. In terms of combat strength among those of the same tier, he was little more than a weakling among weaklings.
He had read the battle reports. The man before him was a ruthless monster who could carve up a sixth-tier magical beast like sashimi. Not to mention the “ominous” result his own divination had shown before he came.
Logaris leaned back in his chair, his fingers tapping lightly against the desk.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Every sound struck Moros right in the heart.
“I fought for my life on the front lines, helped you stop the beast tide, and saved tens of thousands of people.” Logaris’s voice was not loud, but his tone carried three parts chill and seven parts mockery. “And the moment the battle is over, you bring your crystal ball here to investigate me? Is this how the Royal Capital treats its meritorious servants?”
“A misunderstanding! This is absolutely a misunderstanding!” Cold sweat broke out across Moros’s forehead. He quickly pulled a document from his robes. “This is a handwritten letter from the Prime Minister, along with a joint guarantee from the Minister of Finance. As long as you cooperate this once, then anyone who dares make an issue of it again in the future will be opposing the entire Privy Council!”
Logaris glanced at the document and fell silent for a moment.
He seemed to be weighing the pros and cons. The anger on his face eased slightly, replaced by an expression that said, I am extremely displeased, but I will endure it for the greater good.
“Fine.” Logaris let out a sigh and rose to his feet. “I am not an unreasonable man. Since it is for the Prime Minister’s sake, I will give him face.”
Moros was overjoyed and was just about to speak when Logaris cut him off.
“But.”
Logaris raised one finger.
“I have my privacy. That so-called Retrocognition Array of yours is only allowed to examine the twelve-hour period before and after Carlisle’s disappearance. One minute more, and I will snap your staff in half and shove it into your eye.”
“No problem! Absolutely no problem!” Moros nodded so hard it looked as if he were pounding grain.
As long as he could report back, forget twelve hours—even twelve minutes would do. Everyone knew perfectly well that this was just a formality. Who was actually expecting them to uncover anything miraculous?
“Begin.” Logaris pointed toward the open space in the center of the office.
Moros dared not delay. He immediately directed his assistants to begin the setup.
Expensive Stardust Powder was scattered across the floor, outlining an intricate hexagram array. Three lit Soul-Guiding Candles were placed at the array’s focal points, blue smoke rising in curling threads that lingered in the air without dispersing.
“Professor, please stand in the center, relax your mind, and do not resist the array’s probing,” Moros said cautiously.
Expressionless, Logaris walked into the center of the array, both hands tucked into the pockets of his white lab coat. His posture was so casual that he looked like a man waiting for a bus.
“In the name of the River of Time, reveal the shadows of the past—【Temporal Retrocognition】!”
Moros slammed the base of his staff down against the floor.
Bzzz—!
The array flared with brilliant light. The Eye of Heaven gemstone projected a fan-shaped screen of light that hovered in midair. The images within it began rewinding at high speed, finally freezing on the night two days earlier.
The clarity of the scene was astonishing. Even the sound could be reproduced.
On the screen, Logaris was seated in this very room, sketching and writing over a pile of complex alchemical schematics.
“If I alter the mana circuits here, efficiency should improve by three percent...” the Logaris in the image muttered to himself, occasionally lifting the coffee beside him for a sip.
Second by second, time passed.
Moros stared fixedly at the screen of light, his palms slick with sweat.
He sincerely hoped they would not find anything at all.
Part II (I Predicted Your Prediction)
The image fast-forwarded.
One hour, two hours, three hours...
As time passed, the Logaris in the image took a short break, then grabbed a list from the desk and slowly walked out the door.
The vision followed him.
He arrived at the entrance to the Second Prince’s bedchamber.
Standing opposite him were the stern old general Karlsas and the Deputy Officer Eric, whose face was so pale with fright that it looked bloodless.
The Logaris in the image pushed up his glasses. The arrogance unique to an academic authority practically spilled off the screen as he pointed at the trembling deputy officer and said in a cutting tone,
“Inform His Highness that time waits for no one. If I do not see that money and those crystals by noon tomorrow, then I will have no choice but to make everything he has done public.”
After saying that, he did not even spare the deputy officer a second glance. He turned and left at once, his back radiating the irritation of a man thoroughly displeased at not getting his funding.
“This...”
As Moros watched the scene, the heart that had been lodged in his throat finally dropped back into his stomach. His rigid spine slackened at last, though the clothes on his back had already been soaked through with cold sweat.
It was perfect.
The logic formed a complete and airtight loop.
Based on the intelligence currently available, Prince Carlisle had “disappeared” during exactly that time period.
And the vision showed that Logaris had had no opportunity whatsoever to lie in wait and assassinate him. At the time, he had been publicly hounding old General Karlsas for funding over several crates of Magitech Crystals, like a debt collector in broad daylight.
A scene like this—full of mundane detail and witnessed by a high-ranking figure like Karlsas—was not something any illusion could fabricate. Before 【Temporal Retrocognition】, the strongest divination spell below the Seventh Tier, the truth was plain at a glance.
Watching this, Moros felt not only relief that the mission had produced a result, but also the hollow exhaustion of a man who had survived a disaster.
There was no doubt about it.
He had just walked past the gates of hell.
If the scene had really shown Logaris committing the crime, that would have meant the real murderer was standing less than five meters away from him at this very moment.
And if his identity were exposed, then at such a distance, if the other party chose to kill him in a fit of anger, Moros would most likely have no way to escape.
Fortunately, he was innocent.
That meant Moros would not be dropping dead on the spot for knowing too much.
“Well?”
In reality, Logaris, standing inside the array, spoke coldly. His voice was like a blast of wind from an ice cellar.
“Have you seen enough?”
Smack.
Moros hurriedly dispersed the array, and the screen of light vanished in an instant, as though it were a hot potato.
“Yes, yes! More than enough! It was perfectly clear!” Moros wiped away the cold sweat on his brow—sweat that had nothing whatsoever to do with the temperature—while forcing out an incomparably sincere smile.
Whatever the truth might be, at least in this moment, Logaris was “innocent.”
That not only meant Moros could give those above him a perfect explanation—not that we were incompetent, but that the man truly had no time to commit the crime—it also meant that his life had been saved.
“Professor, you truly are a pillar of the nation, working day and night and devoting yourself utterly to the Kingdom’s scientific endeavors.” Moros hurriedly offered some flattery, and there was a genuine tremor in his voice. “I will report truthfully to the council and to the Prime Minister that all suspicion against you has been completely cleared. If anyone dares make an issue of this again, then they will be making an enemy of me, Moros!”
Logaris did not respond. He merely lifted a hand coldly and pointed at the heavy iron door.
“I won’t see you out.”
Brief and to the point, the order to leave was utterly unceremonious.
“Ah, yes, understood. I will go investigate the others’ suspicions at once! Please, carry on, carry on. I will not disturb your experiments any further.”
Moros gathered up his assistants, packed up, and fled with twice the speed he had arrived with, seizing on that excuse as though his life depended on it. The retreating figure looked positively terrified that Logaris might ask him to stay for dinner.
...
With a click, the door locked.
The room sank back into deathly silence.
Logaris stood where he was, unmoving. The coldness and arrogance on his face slowly faded, replaced by a blank lifelessness.
Then an eerie scene unfolded.
This “Logaris,” who had just passed the highest level of divinatory inspection, suddenly raised a hand and pressed it against his temple.
Bzzzt.
A faint layer of golden patterns surfaced across his skin, and at the same time, ripples spread through the air like disturbed water.
In the shadowed corner of the command room, space split open into a narrow fissure.
Another Logaris—wearing the same white coat, the same glasses, and holding a cup of steaming black tea—strode out from within.
The two identical men looked at each other inside that sealed room.
“Not bad. I’ll give your acting nine out of ten.”
The real Logaris sat down elegantly in the armchair set in the shadows and gently blew across the steam rising from his tea. As he looked at the identical “self” before him, a playful smile curved at the corner of his mouth.
The “Logaris” standing in the center of the array did not speak. He merely closed his eyes slowly. The vivid expression on his face froze at once, and the rise and fall of his chest gradually stilled, as though he had fallen into the deepest sleep.
Even now, after that strand of soul had been withdrawn, this body still retained the warmth of living flesh. Its skin was as fine as ever, and simulated lifelike blood even surged through its veins.
This was the perfect masterpiece Logaris had forged using the Dead Branch of the World Tree as its framework, expending a vast quantity of High-Purity Aether Crystals and combining them with the 【Memory Construct Fabrication and Soul Mapping】 technique Maggie had left behind.
To the eyes of a diviner, this was a living person of flesh and blood, with a past and a future. Even if it were dissected, what they would see would only be fresh red organs and bones—not the dead wood that had once formed its original structure.
“I have to admit, Sylvia was right.”
Logaris set down his teacup and walked up to “himself,” his fingers lightly brushing that body’s cheek. A rare trace of approval flashed through his eyes.
In truth, several days earlier, when this Memory Construct had first been born within the Tower of Inverted Truth, Logaris had originally planned to use it only as a substitute for combat and for occasions when he could not personally appear.
As for the Royal Capital’s investigation, his initial plan had merely been to lay down top-tier anti-divination spellwork and simply, brutally block all prying attempts. In his view, as long as they found no evidence, what could that bunch of ministers who only knew how to wag their tongues possibly do to him?
But Sylvia had later offered a different perspective.
“Logaris, you underestimate how insidious those old vermin are.”
“For those old, cunning politicians, ‘finding nothing’ is itself a kind of evidence. If all they see is a blank space, they will fill it with the most vicious fantasies imaginable. Only by letting them personally witness an ‘innocent’ truth—see you drinking tea, drawing diagrams, sleeping—will they relax, because they think they have finally seized a handle they can grasp.”