In a daze, Yun Wei had a dream. He dreamt of a long time ago, of his previous life when the apocalypse had just begun.
He was fully aware that he was dreaming, because at that moment, he was like an observer, quietly looking back at his past.
Yun Wei is his given name. His father's surname is Yun and his mother's surname is Wei. That's all.
Like many of his generation, his parents didn't have a love marriage; they simply went through arranged marriages when they reached a certain age. Their family life lacked any romantic love and was more like a compromise to get by.
His father was sensitive and timid, but absolutely domineering and authoritarian at home. He lost a lot of money in the stock market, but always believed that he could turn things around.
His mother was strong-willed and strict, rarely smiled, and almost never praised Yunwei. After suffering violence from her husband, she always demanded that Yunwei study hard and make her proud.
Yunwei always felt that his mother didn't love him, and even hated him.
But on the day the end of the world came, the frail and thin mother stood in front of her father, who had already turned into a zombie, and told him to run away.
At that time, he also had a low fever and was running towards the outskirts of the city in the heavy rain. Everywhere was filled with water mist that he could not wipe away, and the rainwater poured into the back of his neck and was then evaporated into hot steam in his face by his body heat.
The dream's timeline was chaotic and reversed. He was running behind his fourteen-year-old self, and as he ran, the scene changed to the moment before the apocalypse broke out.
The aroma of food wafted from the kitchen, and the television was showing a scene of people fighting fiercely amidst a bloody chaos. But then, my father received a phone call and had to go out to play cards.
The mother, wearing an apron, came out at the sound, holding a spatula and standing at the kitchen doorway, anxiously muttering to herself, trying to dissuade the father. The man, however, flew into a rage, pointing at the mother's nose and shouting something, the veins on his neck bulging ugly and menacing.
Yun Wei wanted to stand in front of his mother, but his body was bound by an invisible force, making him struggle in vain in the air.
At that moment, he suddenly saw himself. His fourteen-year-old self stood behind the bedroom door with a gloomy expression, coldly observing the mess in the living room through the slightly ajar door.
After another chaotic argument, the man slammed the door and left, while the hunched woman stubbornly stood at the kitchen doorway, her lips tightly pressed together. Her eyes were clearly moist, but Yun Wei felt they had long since dried up.
He then noticed that his mother, though only in her early forties, already had a few gray hairs at her temples.
"……Mother."
The surrounding scenery gradually began to collapse and burn. Before being pulled back to reality by an invisible force, Yun Wei stared at the woman standing silently in a sea of fire and called out with great longing.
The distant sound of burning overlapped with the crackling of dry branches from the nearby bonfire.
Yun Wei opened his eyes, and what came into view was the uneven ceiling of the cave, with flickering firelight sweeping up specks of black smoke, freely painting a watery picture on it.
The dampness on his forehead was uncomfortable, but thankfully the cave was cool, which neutralized the sweltering heat. Yun Wei raised his hand to shield his eyes and exhaled a long breath.
"Awake?" A voice came from the other side of the fire; it was Isaac.
Yun Wei turned his head and saw a tall knight sitting on a stone bench, guarding the side near the cave entrance, occasionally picking up two or three pieces of dry branches and throwing them into the blazing fire.
Yun Wei then noticed that even under him were several layers of small branches, and a thick layer of dry grass, which served as a makeshift bed.
The cave appeared to have been cleaned; the fragments of stone slabs had been carefully gathered, and even the empty coffin had been moved to a corner.
"Yes, the fever has subsided," Yun Wei replied hesitantly, sitting up. Having just emerged from a distant dream, he wasn't very energetic. He glanced outside the cave, seeing only a dark shadow; it seemed another day had passed.
“It’s fine.” Even while sitting, Isaac kept his back straight. He looked up at Yun Wei, who seemed to have just recovered from a nightmare. A few strands of hair were hanging on his sweaty forehead, making him look particularly vulnerable.
So he kindly added, "You can continue to lie down and sleep for a while, but be careful of relapses."
“No, I can’t sleep.” It was rare for Yun Wei to suggest, “Let’s talk about something, Isaac.”
He usually preferred to be alone in silence, but that distant dream, like a mysterious revelation or an unclear omen, made him quite uneasy at this moment.
My heart is like a puzzle piece with a missing piece, desperately needing something to fill it.
“Okay.” Isaac looked up at Yun Wei again. Through the firelight, Yun Wei felt that the gaze was blazing and made him feel a little confused.
Soon, Isaac posed his first question.
What's your name?
"Claude." Yun Wei replied without hesitation, having used this alias since the first day he arrived on the Zhuyuan Continent.
“A nice name,” Isaac said politely, but his brows furrowed. “However, it’s probably not your real name. It seems that the real names of you Easterners from Azure City are all quite difficult to pronounce.”
"Huh? Huh..." Yun Wei was taken aback, then realized what was happening.
Besides the three kingdoms of Red Moon, Black Chain, and Golden Cloud, beyond the vast Mermaid Beach to the east, bordering the East Sea, lies the city of Azure Glass, inhabited entirely by people with black hair and black eyes.
Legend has it that the people who built the city came from the continent on the other side of the sea and crossed the ocean a thousand years ago.
Yun Wei had always lived near the desolate ancient battlefield in the southwest of the Red Moon Kingdom and did not move around much, so he was unaware of the situation in Bili City.
Fortunately, Bili merchants have a wide reach throughout the Zhuyuan world. When Yun Wei occasionally goes to nearby towns to buy necessary supplies, the locals mistake him for a Bili merchant, which adds a lot of convenience.
"Then do you want me to tell you my real name?" Yun Wei asked with a smile, but his expression was one of resistance. The firelight reflected on his pale, thin chin, making his blood-red lips appear as if they were pressed into a straight line, making him look more like a dead man crawling out of a coffin than Isaac.
Isaac glanced at Yun Wei quietly and threw the question back at him, "If you'd like."
"We'll talk about that later." Unable to bear Isaac's gaze, Yun Wei quickly changed the subject. "I remember before, you seemed to have summoned a stream of water?"
He vaguely remembered Isaac's actions with water and light before he passed out. He glanced at his feet and saw that the skin was smooth and delicate, with no trace of the previous injuries.
Isaac paused for a moment, then nodded slightly. "I guess you mean this... 'Water Control'?"
He stretched out his hand and made a gesture. In the void, a stream of clear water appeared again, swirling nimbly twice along the stiff shirt sleeve, like an incredibly agile water snake.
He then stopped channeling his magic, and the water snake vanished in an instant.
Isaac looked at Yun Wei, who was staring in disbelief on the other side, and asked in great confusion, "Is there a problem?"
"Cough, cough cough..." If Yun Wei hadn't been influenced by his surroundings after transmigrating and firmly believed that knights were all upright, he would have suspected that Isaac was deliberately showing off.
He stared at Isaac and asked in a strange tone, "Isn't your Branch of Time of Light? How can you possibly use water elemental magic?"
Putting aside the question of how a knight could cast magic instantly, and do it so effortlessly.
The fact that the Light-attribute Branch of Time could unleash water magic completely overturned his common sense. Generally speaking, on the Continent of Elements, the Branch of Time's attribute is basically fixed when a mage advances to a second-tier professional.
As a so-called magician of the light element, the Time Branch is naturally golden in color and can only learn and master light element magic.
"..." Upon hearing this, Isaac hesitated for a moment, but still corrected him with utmost honesty: "To be precise, my Branch of Time has the dual elemental attributes of light and fire. Our family's bloodline is rather special; almost everyone has dual elements..."
Yun Wei: "?"
Should he look at what he's saying? The Fire Elemental Branch of Time has unleashed Water Elemental magic?
Oh, Lord of Glory, he felt he must still be in a ridiculous dream.
Taking in the distorted expression on Yun Wei's face, the honest and upright knight belatedly realized what was wrong and hesitantly asked, "Is there a problem?"
As if infected by Yun Wei, his confidence seemed to have diminished.
Yun Wei held his forehead.
There's a problem, of course there's a problem! And it's a huge problem!
He cleared his throat and gave Isaac a brief explanation of the current situation he had witnessed since arriving on the Continent of Elements, emphasizing, "Because the Branch of Time is unique, necromancers like me are already on the Church's blacklist."
About fifty years ago, the thirteenth Pope Joshua issued a decree declaring necromancers heretics, and the War of the Dead broke out.
Caught off guard by the attack, the necromancers hastily retaliated, using many forbidden spells, which caused their image in the eyes of the world to change from being respected and kept at a distance to being completely infamous.
Isaac, who had been listening attentively, finally spoke up, "Indeed, the Branch of Time is unique. But if elemental transformation is achieved through the Branch of Time, wouldn't it be possible to cast spells across elements?"
"Element...transformation? What does that mean?" Yun Wei was hearing this very professional-sounding term for the first time. He tried his best to imitate Isaac's pronunciation and spell it out, humbly asking for clarification.
Seeing that his sickly master had finally perked up, Isaac sighed and patiently explained, "As everyone knows, the seven elements of the Continent of Elements are fire and water, wind and earth, ice and lightning, and light. Apart from the first three groups of mutually opposing elements, they can be transformed into each other, but it requires paying double the amount of magic power as a price."
Upon hearing this, Yun Wei thought for a moment and, drawing inferences from the previous instance, guessed, "Is it because it first transformed into some kind of neutral substance?"
Isaac was somewhat surprised, but still nodded approvingly: "You're right. This is also why the Dimensional Continent can accommodate various laws from other dimensions. It's precisely 'elements'—the kind of neutral matter you mentioned, which you can understand as energy itself."
"Yuan" means the origin. All laws are measured through the energy they contain, and then manifest their forms on the continent of all elements through the "Branch of Time".
Yun Wei quickly understood this and asked with some anticipation, "Then can you teach me how to perform elemental transformation?"
Forced to become a necromancer, he lived in constant hiding from the Holy See's pursuit.
Now there's finally a possibility of a pretense, perhaps allowing him to end his life of constant exile—
Yun Wei was somewhat agitated, and a sharp, stabbing pain shot through his chest, causing him to cough violently again.
When he looked up again, through his tear-streaked eyelashes, he saw Isaac staring intently at him, his deep brows furrowed, filled with worry.
Yun Wei suddenly stopped talking. He then realized that the other party might have misunderstood and was worried that he would use the power of the contract to coerce him.
It's important to know that in the Continent of Dimensions, everything related to magic is extremely expensive. A magician is synonymous with wisdom and knowledge.
Most people, in their entire lives, can only cast level two magic.
Even a mere fourth-level high-ranking archmage is already prestigious enough to be courted by many counts in the three kingdoms, who would then recruit them as vassals, granting them vast territories.
All knowledge about magic was shelved and put up for sale. Even a mere spellcasting technique could represent a considerable fortune.
The consequence of this is that magic has shifted from the mundane to the mystical, from the broad to the narrow, to the point that in the present day, the only Branch of Time has become common knowledge.
Realizing this, Yun Wei quickly wiped his face and waved his hand awkwardly, "Sorry, cough, I got too excited. It's okay—"
Isaac, however, interrupted his polite conversation by asking an irrelevant question, "Do you have a cup?"
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