"What... Turns out to be a man." Li Yifei leaned his head out to take a look and muttered softly.
"Um?"
Merlin, sitting quietly on the chair, glanced at him, a faint light flashed in his eyes, and the next moment his body, which was covered by the dark blue robe, twisted violently...
In the blink of an eye, she turned into a slim blonde!
"Gender means nothing to me." Merlin's gentle voice rang out, leaving Li Yifei at the door dumbfounded.
"Dean... this, this..." Li Yifei pointed at Merlin and stammered.
Lin Qiye didn't seem surprised by this. He shook his head and spoke slowly:
"He is Merlin, the legendary great magician who is proficient in transfiguration. Not to mention turning him into a woman, he can even turn him into your father."
As soon as Lin Qiye finished speaking, Merlin's body twisted again and expanded rapidly. The dark blue robe on his body also grew rapidly, but no one knew what material the robe was made of, so no matter how much his body expanded, it could not be torn apart.
Snake scales appeared on his body and his scarlet snake tongue spewed out. In just a moment, Merlin turned into a Nanda snake demon that was several times larger than Li Yifei's original body!
The snake demon in a dark blue robe was perched on a chair, its vertical pupils staring at Li Yifei. An invisible pressure descended on Li Yifei, causing him to shiver.
Lin Qiye turned his head and looked at Li Yifei, "Is this your father?"
"… How would I know?" Li Yifei muttered and took a half step back, "I don't even know what my father looks like."
"He can see through your true form and your father's appearance... Is this the power of prophecy?"
Lin Qiye sighed, his eyes fell on the snake demon, and he spoke calmly:
"Sir Merlin, you should change back and let's talk."
The snake demon nodded slightly, and his body flashed, turning into that ordinary young man again, sitting quietly on the chair.
In the dim room, the two just stared at each other silently, and the air suddenly fell into silence.
"Are you Lin Qiye?" Merlin spoke slowly.
"You know me?"
"Ten years ago, I predicted that you would open this door."
When Lin Qiye heard such a charlatan's words, he immediately became interested, "Then take a look at my future?"
Merlin shook his head. "I don't know."
"Aren't you able to predict?"
"Prophecy is not omnipotent." Merlin stared into Lin Qiye's eyes, "When you first opened the door, I tried to spy on your fate, but your 'past' and 'future' are all blurry. Only the 'present' can give me a glimpse."
"Now?" Lin Qiye raised his eyebrows, "What is my 'now' like?"
"You are now in a dangerous vortex. If you take a wrong step, you will be crushed to pieces, and this may also involve the people around you..."
Lin Qiye's gaze gradually became serious.
"No matter how clear it is, I can't see it." Merlin shook his head, "I can't make too accurate predictions now."
"Why?"
"I lost my crystal ball."
"Lost?" Lin Qiye was stunned.
Merlin seemed to have thought of something, and a bitter look appeared on his lips. "Ten years ago, a little girl came to this room and challenged me to a duel. She said that if I won, she would let me go, but if I lost, I would have to give her the crystal ball..."
"And you lost?" Lin Qiye's eyes gradually lit up. "That little girl, was she twelve or thirteen years old, with long black hair and a strange pattern on the back of her hand?"
"That's right."
Lin Qiye hesitated for a moment, "What did you compete in?"
Merlin's mouth was bitter. "Prophecy, or... deduction."
"Deduction? How can we compare?" Li Yifei couldn't help but ask.
"We started with a fallen leaf and extrapolated the changes of the entire forest in the past 50 years, now, and in the next 50 years. There was no winner. Then we extrapolated the changes of stones, water drops...
Later we discovered that no matter how we compared ourselves to external things, we could not determine who was better, so we simply took each other as the target and inferred everything about each other.
In the second round, she successfully deduced part of my destiny, but in the third round, I failed to see through her… "
Merlin's brows furrowed more and more as he recalled what happened at that time.
"Her existence was totally beyond my expectation. No matter the 'past', 'present' or 'future', there was no trace of her... She was like a ghost that did not belong to this world. No matter what method I used, I could not get a glimpse of her fate.
So... I lost."
Li Yifei swallowed his saliva, nudged Lin Qiye with his hand, and whispered: "So weird? Who is that girl?"
"I don't know either." Lin Qiye shook his head, his brows also furrowed.
There is no doubt that the girl who won Merlin's crystal ball, the girl who won Nyx's bracelet, and the girl who left the envelope in the dean's office are the same person, that is, "Memorial".
But how could a girl of twelve or thirteen years old win over the goddess of night in creation and win over Merlin, the great prophet, in deducing fate
The more he learned, the more Lin Qiye felt that this girl who called herself "Memorial" was full of mystery. If he could find out who she was, then the origin of this mysterious Mental Hospital of the Gods might be revealed...
However, for Lin Qiye now, it seems too early to explore this.
Now, the most urgent task is to find a way to cure this legendary magician and extract some of his abilities!
Lin Qiye nodded slightly, carefully observing Merlin for a while, with some doubts emerging between his brows.
Merlin's situation is different from Nyx's. At least so far, he has not shown any mental problems. So where should he start
After hesitating for a moment, Lin Qiye looked into Merlin's eyes and spoke seriously:
"What's wrong with you?"
"?" Merlin raised his eyebrows, "You are sick."
"Why are you here if you are not sick?"
"I don't know." Merlin shrugged. "I'm just a scholar trying to understand the true face of the world."
"What is the world really like?"
"What do you think the world is, and what are we?"
Without waiting for Lin Qiye to speak, Merlin continued, "For deep-sea fish, the seawater and deep-sea creatures are their world. They don't know that there is land outside the ocean, and they don't know that there are creatures on land that are completely different from them.
For two-dimensional creatures, the world is a plane. Their existence itself limits their worldview. They cannot imagine that there are three-dimensional creatures outside the plane observing their actions.
For deep-sea fish, the ocean is their world; for two-dimensional creatures, the plane is their world…
But is the world they believe in the real world
no.
Then how do you know that the 'world' we know is the real world
What is truly real, what is the real 'world'?!
What is outside this world? And what are we like from the perspective of creatures at higher dimensions? "
Merlin's gaze gradually became hot, and in his eyes, Lin Qiye clearly saw the flame called "seeking knowledge"!
He stood up from the chair, pointed one finger at the sky, held Lin Qiye's wrist with the other hand, stared into his eyes, and spoke word by word:
"Have you ever thought that maybe... the world we live in was also created by a higher-dimensional being?"