Chapter 43: Resurgence

　　Part 1: Phantasm of the Mind's Domain　　I stayed down a while longer until the pounding in my skull finally eased and some strength crept back into my limbs. I kept a wary eye on King Chixin. The four beams of light binding him to that stone platform still looked secure. Should be fine.I pulled out the bronze sword and sat back, but my gaze never left him. Not for a second.　　Replaying the visions in my head, some of the pieces finally clicked.　　From his own memories, Chixin had jumped through time twice. The first jump was when we met him—he’d probably leapt forward to our time. The second was when he vanished before our eyes—likely a jump back to his own era. But according to those carved records near the altar, from the moment he entered the secret paths to the moment King Gesar cut him down, there were only ever twotemporal ripples. If time travel always causes a ripple, then the math doesn’t add up. Because after he went back, he didn’t die. So either the carvings are wrong, or I’ve got the ripple rules all twisted.　　Hold on, something’s still off. I’m missing something. Think. Work backwards.　　Right after the second ripple happened, the scene was this: King Gesar’s shrine was still there, the eternal lamp was lit, and the "waking corpse" Chixin had eaten was gone. If we use the shrine as a fixed point—and since someone had to physically light that lamp—then if we threehad time-traveled, we should have run into whoever did it. But we didn’t. Before we fell through that altar floor, the main hall was empty. No ancients, no expedition team, not even an earlier version of "us" who’d just lit the light. All the ritual objects were exactly where we’d first seen them, too, including that A-Jie drumwe’d moved.　　And when I reached Chixin’s altar, I didn’t find anyone alive either. The place was covered in dust. The little blood-sacrifice hole only had the faintest, oldest stain. No way another "us" had been there first. That proved it: our own timeline hadn’t crossed paths with itself.　　So, the only one moving between different points in time was King Chixin, after he ate that "corpse."　　But where did he go? Did he really go back a thousand years?　　"A fixed point… I need a fixed point in time to line this up…" I muttered.　　"ROAR!" King Chixin bell