CHAPTER 478: CHAPTER 475 [THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!]

Chapter 475: This is Impossible!

Chen Nuo didn’t know how to find Lu Xixi in 1981.

In this era, there was no internet, and the Octopus Monster’s organization had no website either.

Even upon careful reflection, Chen Nuo realized he actually knew very little about Lu Xixi’s past before he met her in his youth.

In his previous life, ever since Chen Yanluo debuted, the Star Sky Empress’s fame had already been resounding, making her the brightest star in the Underground World of Ability Users.

The only thing he knew was that Lu Xixi had mostly lived in Britain before.

These past few days, Chen Nuo had been strolling along the mouth of the Thames River and visiting various districts in London.

Of course, this kind of needle-in-a-haystack search was highly inefficient.

But Chen Nuo wasn’t really trying to find Lu Xixi by wandering the streets.

Instead, he was searching for this era’s Octopus Monster organization, for the underground organizations of this time.

Naturally, he sought out the most well-known underground organization in London.

The Blade Knights.

Well... actually, I also think you guys are quite unlucky, ending up as a real tragic organization...

On the top floor of an ancient building, Chen Nuo stood amidst ruins, shards of glass crunching beneath his feet. He slowly walked over and pulled up a middle-aged man who was half-lying on the ground, craning his neck.

Then, with a gentle tug, he dislocated the man’s arm. The middle-aged man’s face contorted in pain, but he bit down hard.

"I’m really sorry. If you were willing to cooperate nicely, you wouldn’t have to suffer like this," Chen Nuo sighed.

"Who the hell are you?! What have we done to provoke you?!" the middle-aged man gasped, staring at Chen Nuo with a mixture of terror and rage.

Well, that question got a bit sanitized in Chen Nuo’s ears, filtering out the F-word.

In the main hall on the top floor, at least seven or eight people lay askew on the ground.

"Let me count... Knight Commander, Grand Knight, Knight... Squire... one, two, three, four..."

Chen Nuo’s gaze swept across them, then he shook his head. "Seems like we’re still missing two people, right?"

The middle-aged man Chen Nuo held had a grim look in his eyes. "You... You know a lot about our organization?!"

How could he not know? This tragic organization, in both his past and present lives, had been annihilated once by the Star Sky Empress. Now he himself had come to mess with them again. They were truly a bunch of unlucky sods.

"No hatred, no grudges. I just need someone in London and Britain to do some work for me."

Chen Nuo smiled. He passed his hand near the middle-aged man’s ear and directly plunged his fingers into the nearby wall. He pulled out the electrical conduit and a length of wire, which he then promptly wrapped around the man’s neck.

"You..." the man started.

"I generally don’t like to be so crude, but I’m short on time, so I can only resort to bullying this once," Chen Nuo said. "However, from what I understand, your group isn’t made up of good people. So doing something unpleasant to you doesn’t really bother my conscience."

The wire was quickly wound several times around the middle-aged man’s neck. Terror was evident in his eyes, yet his hands hung limply, unable to rise, powerless to resist.

"You have two choices.

"First, I can hang you up by this wire, perhaps on the Tower of London. With your Ability, being hanged by the neck for a day shouldn’t kill you. However, from that point on, the dignity and prestige of the Blade Knights in the Underground World would be utterly shattered.

"Second, you do as I say. Serve me well and accomplish one task. Once it’s done, I’ll let you go and disappear, and I won’t trouble you again. Oh, right, I’ll also pay you an additional fee.

"What do you say? Now you can choose."

"I choose the second option!!" the middle-aged man declared with righteous determination.

Chen Nuo was startled.

Submitting so nobly?

Seeing Chen Nuo loosen his grip, the middle-aged man quickly tugged the wire from around his neck. He took a deep breath and said in a low voice, "Though I don’t know who you are, you have displayed Controller level abilities! The Blade Knights are willing to serve a Controller."

"...You could’ve just said so."

Chen Nuo was taken aback for a moment, then a kind smile immediately appeared on his face. He kindly reached out and patted the glass shards off the middle-aged man.

"Are you badly hurt? I actually held back. Hmm, the Blade Knights should have a reserve of Self-Healing Serum, right? Hurry up and get two shots."

The middle-aged man’s expression didn’t change, but he was cursing endlessly in his heart. He slowly said, "Now, please tell me what you need."

Chen Nuo thought for a moment. With a gesture of his hand, a heavy wooden table from across the hall automatically flew to him. Chen Nuo pulled open a drawer, took out a piece of paper and a pen, and began to draw quickly.

Chen Nuo’s drawing skills weren’t particularly advanced.

But as an Ability User with strong spiritual power and extraordinary learning ability, he had occasionally learned a bit of drawing in the past, so simple sketches weren’t a problem for him.

Moments later, a beautiful young woman’s face appeared on the paper.

This was the appearance of Lu Xixi from Chen Nuo’s memory.

"You... are looking for someone? The woman in this portrait?" The middle-aged man, as expected of the leader of the Blade Knights, was quick to catch on.

"Yes, and no."

Chen Nuo shook his head. "You need to find an expert, preferably from the police talent pool; I’ve heard they have such people. Find someone to age-regress the image of the woman in this portrait to what she looked like at five or six years old.

"I know the restoration process might result in inaccuracies, but this is the only image I can provide.

"Then, I need you to find that five- or six-year-old little girl.

"She might be in London, or she might not be. But most likely, she’s in Britain.

"So you can start working now."

The middle-aged man drew in a sharp breath.

This task was not an easy one.

If this were in the future, finding someone by restoring a photo and then using that photo to locate them could be done with enough authority.

One would just need to enter the official residential registration network and compare the photos.

But this was 1981!

Even a developed country like Britain hadn’t computerized its offices!

This meant that if one were looking for a person, their name, address, ID number, photograph... all these details were still stored on paper.

Hidden in a vast sea of archives!

In the evening, Chen Nuo stayed in a top hotel in London—the hotel was a property of the Blade Knights.

As an old Level A Ability User organization, the Blade Knights had a foundation even more profound than The Abyss.

Chen Nuo had no interest in tasting Britain’s infamous "dark delicacies."

Dinner was French cuisine, as was the wine, a contribution from the private collection of the Grand Knight Commander of the Blade Knights.

Standing by the window of the luxurious suite, rumored to have once been inhabited by some British noble from history, Chen Nuo looked out at the dark sky and once again reviewed the clues in his mind.

Actually... essentially, Chen Nuo had one particularly strange point about this time travel that he couldn’t understand.

From his previous contacts with Seed, The Fourth Seed, and others like them, Chen Nuo had gained some understanding of the rules of time and space. Jumping through time, even for someone like Chen Nuo who had once stood in the fourth dimension, was subject to certain rules.

For example, his own time travel: when he went back to 2001, it was in compliance with some rules. Firstly, he couldn’t return to a time point before he was born! Secondly, his time travel needed a spatio-temporal anchor point! These two points were immutable rules.

So, how should he understand his current return to 1981?

In 1981, he shouldn’t have been born yet. This violated the first rule. And in 1981, he had no anchor point.

Then, where did this 1981 world he was in come from?

The first conclusion Chen Nuo reached was: This! Is! Not! My! World!

Clearly, this was a timeline completely severed from, and entirely different to, the one he originally belonged to. There was no continuous relationship between the two. Put simply, this could be a parallel universe.

Therefore, anything he did here would not affect the subsequent historical development of the year 2002 that he came from. So, he dared to disable Yao Weishan, saving Old Sun from his tragic life, which also meant extinguishing the birth of Sun Keke in this timeline.

Of course, before doing this, Chen Nuo had first performed a test. On the first night after arriving in this era, he had attempted to interfere with the relationship between Chen Jianshe and Ou Xiuhua. The commotion in the barbershop had disturbed the original historical trajectory of Chen Jianshe and Ou Xiuhua’s meeting. There was no incident like ’finding his own body gradually disappearing.’

Since interfering with the relationship between Chen Jianshe and Ou Xiuhua on this timeline didn’t cause him to disappear, then disturbing Old Sun’s affairs wouldn’t endanger Sun Keke from his own timeline either. So, doing these things was merely because he didn’t want to see Old Sun and the others suffer again. Although it wouldn’t affect the timeline he existed in, doing so in this timeline was a form of consolation.

Finding Lu Xixi, however, was another, deeper attempt; Chen Nuo had his own additional considerations.

More importantly... from the first minute Chen Nuo traveled to this era, when he realized the timeline he was in, he had felt a vague, special fluctuation from the depths of his Consciousness Space. It was a faint sensation, similar to repulsion. This feeling was inexplicable and untraceable.

He felt that his current time travel probably wouldn’t last very long.

The phone in the room suddenly rang.

Chen Nuo picked up the phone; it was someone from the Blade Knights.

Chen Nuo wasn’t angry that they were calling in the middle of the night—he had instructed them to inform him immediately if they found any clues.

"Is there news?"

"Yes, we’ve found the person in your portrait!"

"Hmm?!" Chen Nuo’s eyes brightened.

They found her so easily?!

Then, Chen Nuo took a deep breath. "Where is the person?"

"Sir, something’s not right. That person, that portrait..."

Chen Nuo frowned. "What exactly is going on?"

"I’ll come to you right away. I can’t explain this matter clearly, but once you see for yourself, you’ll understand. I’ll be there in at most fifteen minutes."

"Okay."

Chen Nuo hung up the phone, took a deep breath, and tried to calm his racing thoughts.

On the phone, the Grand Knight Commander’s tone had an indescribable weirdness to it.

The Grand Knight Commander was very punctual.

He said he would arrive in fifteen minutes, and he knocked on Chen Nuo’s door in the fourteenth minute.

Then, upon entering the room, he respectfully took out the bag he was carrying, pulled out a stack of items from it, and placed them on the table in front of Chen Nuo.

The method used by the Blade Knights to find people was quite ingenious.

As an old organization, they had sufficient resources and enough proxy forces in the secular world.

They had a method of searching for people that Chen Nuo found quite novel.

Beyond the usual broad net, they extended their search to an angle most people wouldn’t consider.

They systematically checked the photo studios in every London district.

In 1981, it wasn’t the era where everyone had smartphones to take photos.

Even digital cameras weren’t widespread yet.

In that era, the only options for taking photos were to go to a photo studio or, if you owned a camera, to take the film there to be developed.

Thus, photo studios actually preserved a massive amount of negatives and photographs.

And taking photos as mementos was a common practice for people in the vast majority of civilized countries.

And these records, aside from the dusty piles in government archives, could often be found in photo studios.

So, the Blade Knights dispatched personnel with the age-regressed portrait Chen Nuo had provided—modified to depict a young girl. After they scoured every photo studio in the streets and alleys of London for photo comparisons, they made a discovery.

"These are the items. You’ll understand as soon as you see for yourself," the Grand Knight Commander said, then silently stood aside.

Chen Nuo opened the folder.

In truth, there was nothing else inside, just a single photograph.

An old-fashioned black-and-white photograph.

The person in the photo had bright, expressive eyes like stars and a delicately beautiful, fetching appearance...

Chen Nuo recognized her at a glance and confirmed without hesitation: this was Lu Xixi!

There was absolutely no mistaking it!

But because of that very certainty, Chen Nuo’s complexion abruptly changed!

Because the photo was from this era!

And the person in the photo was Lu Xixi!

But this Lu Xixi was not the five- or six-year-old girl!

It was the grown-up, stunning, captivating Lu Xixi that Chen Nuo was most familiar with!

The Lu Xixi who was in her twenties!

How could a photo of Lu Xixi in her twenties possibly appear in 1981?!

In 1981, Lu Xixi should have been a young girl!

How could such an adult photo appear?!

The corner of Chen Nuo’s eye twitched. Holding the photo, he turned to look at the Grand Knight Commander.

"Where did this photo come from?" Chen Nuo asked, his voice somewhat hoarse. He himself couldn’t quite grasp the complex emotions swirling within him at that moment.

"From a photo studio in the North District," the Grand Knight Commander immediately replied. "The studio owner said he remembered it. A photography enthusiast was taking pictures in the square and happened to capture a very beautiful young woman passing by. The enthusiast then brought the film to the studio to be developed."

But as for who the person in the photo was, nobody knew.

The woman in the photo was so beautiful that she was unforgettable, so the studio owner kept a copy for himself.

After a pause, the Grand Knight Commander added, "According to the studio owner, this photo was likely taken three years ago."

Upon hearing this, Chen Nuo’s fingers subconsciously tightened, crumpling the photo he held in his hand!

Three years ago?

That’s even more impossible!

Three years ago from now would be 1978!

How could the Lu Xixi of 1978 look like this?!

No...

Just how old is my wife?!