CHAPTER 344: CHAPTER 1: SEIZING THE HUMAN FORM! THE AESTHETICS OF VIOLENCE

Dimension Space.

Duncan’s consciousness seemed to resonate with the river of time, and in an instant, the flow of time began to accelerate. It even seemed as if he possessed a kind of prophetic ability, allowing him to vaguely glimpse some future time branches.

This is the ability of an Immortal Heroic Spirit!

At this moment, Duncan’s feeling was extraordinarily wondrous. The time he saw was like a horizontal fork, with the handle representing humanity’s past history, and the fork’s tines representing the current point in time.

The passage of time is like the handle of the fork continually extending, while the tines are the potential futures that can be glimpsed through divination magic and foreknowledge ability. The stronger the power one possesses, the more branches extend from the fork’s tines.

However, no matter how many branches extend, as time moves, all foreseen futures will eventually become predetermined reality.

Which is precisely the current point in time.

All timelines collapse towards the present location, whether it’s a few or dozens of prophecies about the future. Ultimately, only when the present is anchored does the future become the present and enter the core timeline; it is the position of the fork’s handle.

In that instant, Duncan saw the timeline of the empire he established enduring.

In that fork-patterned time stream, the first prophetic branch showed the empire lasting over two hundred and forty years, eventually collapsing completely. The second prophetic branch showed the empire enduring nearly four hundred years, with another lineage resurrecting the empire through a chance event. In the third prophetic branch, the duration was even longer, and the empire was inherited for nearly a thousand years, with three bloodlines all rising, ultimately replacing the historical status of the Holy Roman Empire.

"No wonder Merlin is so obsessed with predicting the future."

Duncan only glimpsed a bit of the prophetic future before withdrawing his consciousness. The stronger the ability, the more future fragments can be prophesied, but regardless of whether there are thousands or tens of thousands of possibilities, only reality carries any genuine meaning.

"It seems I’m not the only one; many powerful beings have the ability to foresee the future."

"But with so many people meddling with the future, how the future culminates into the present is already uncertain."

Currently, Duncan’s understanding of prophecy and time is rather superficial.

Yet it can be understood as: tomorrow, Old Wang next door will be hit by a car and die, which is a future you see through prophecy. Meanwhile, Old Li next door also glimpsed this prophecy; you hope Old Wang lives, while Old Li hopes he dies.

If both of you can foresee the future, ultimately Old Wang’s outcome has little to do with the prophecy. When tomorrow arrives, and time becomes the present, Old Wang’s fate will be decided.

If you intervene, Old Wang may live; if he intervenes, Old Wang may die. If both of you intervene, the result might be different again, and Old Wang perhaps is gravely injured, half dead.

These prophetic glimpses of time branches only serve as references.

It is only when the timeline reaches tomorrow from today, after everyone thinks about whether to intervene, that the final result will appear. Then at that moment, it anchors as the present, becoming a predetermined fact, which is the handle of the horizontal time fork. Once anchored, it is the main timeline of the past, those events that have already happened.

The past has only one timeline, but the future has infinite possibilities.

The present acts as the bearing on the timeline. When the bearing moves, no matter how many glimpse and foresee the future, ultimately everything collapses into a predetermined fact, becoming part of the past history.

Merlin also showed signs of becoming a demonized person because he was trapped in prophecies, always hoping the future would turn out the way he envisioned.

In the end, when the future becomes the present, it was Duncan’s rise that replaced everything.

In other words, the moment Duncan completely rose to unify the empire, he was the point of time collapsing, the real present. Everything previously prophesied by other entities became mere illusions. Even future prophecies glimpsed by the gods won’t occur, as the real present was Duncan single-handedly building a powerful empire.

Foreknowledge ability isn’t as omnipotent as it seems.

"So that’s how it is."

"It seems that once I enter the High Magic World, I won’t have to worry about others’ divination magic."

Duncan rested his chin as he observed the projection page, which bore a golden mark.

——"Immortal Heroic Spirit [River of Human History]: The existence of the No. 1 Human Form has already entered the river of human history, becoming an immortal guardian of the human historical timeline. In times of need, you must act to ensure the continuation of human history and address any existential crises threatening humanity."

[Note: The Immortal Heroic Spirit will only be summoned when humanity is at risk of total extinction!]

(Similar to the extinction-level crisis like the meteor impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, it must be a crisis threatening total human extinction to trigger the compulsory summoning mechanism of the Immortal Heroic Spirit.)

(Other conventional war crises that are not extinction-level do not trigger the forcible summoning of the Heroic Spirit.)

The No. 1 Human Form can rise from the Heroic Spirit Throne!

The permissions possessed by Immortal Heroic Spirits are vast, but only specific situations trigger them. For instance, if they foresee an extinction-level catastrophe threatening humanity, they can then incarnate as Immortals to safeguard the river of human history, forcibly crossing dimensions into the real world, and in their ’complete form.’