Chapter 41: A Big Head, But It's the Path of Erudition!
"You guys are having quite the lively chat." Himeko strolled into the Parlor Car, her coffee cup pausing halfway to her lips. Her golden eyes immediately locked onto Rekka. More specifically, they locked onto his head, which had visibly swollen to at least a size and a half larger than normal. "Rekka, your look today... is quite unique."
Rekka did not even blink. "You were just thinking: 'Last time he turned to the Path of Erudition, he almost killed himself. I need to watch him closely this time and not let him research anything dangerous again.' Thank you for your concern, Sister Himeko."
Himeko blinked, lowering her cup with a soft clink against its saucer. "That is indeed exactly what I was thinking," she admitted, a wry smile touching her lips. "So, besides your head getting bigger and spontaneously reading minds to predict the future, are there any other side effects to this Brain Development Potion you brewed?"
"None at all." Rekka's voice was flat, devoid of its usual chaotic inflection. "It merely forces my communication methods to lean toward absolute efficiency. I will return to my normal physiological state in exactly one hour. Right now, I am simply routing ninety-nine percent of my physical caloric energy directly into cerebral activity."
At this moment, Rekka was essentially a miniature, flesh-and-blood version of Nous. A giant, swollen head, but walking the Path of Erudition!
", I can now deduce future events within a short temporal window," Rekka continued, his enlarged head resting heavily against the back of the sofa. "In exactly three minutes, the Astral Express will collide with a giant cosmic beast. The carriage will experience moderate turbulence, but the creature lacks the mass to halt our high-speed Warp trajectory. It will be instantly pulverized against the shielding. Therefore, no one needs to panic."
March 7th tilted her head, her pink hair swishing. "There was no broadcast warning from the conductor's room about the route just now. Are you absolutely sure we are going to hit something that big?"
"There was no broadcast because the Express's radar system has a limited detection threshold," Rekka explained smoothly, his eyes tracking invisible calculations in the air. "That giant beast is currently in a state of ultra-low energy fluctuation, akin to deep space hibernation. It perfectly evades conventional sensory scans. However, within my current calculation model, its ambient mass and micro-gravitational field exposed its coordinates long ago. I have one hundred and ninety-eight seconds left."
March 7th immediately crowded over to the nearest window, pressing her face flat against the reinforced glass to peer out into the starry void. "Is there really something out there?"
Welt Yang adjusted his glasses. He gripped the handle of his cane, his knuckles whitening slightly as his expression shifted into serious contemplation.
"One hundred and twenty seconds," Rekka reported, his tone as mechanical as a metronome.
Dan Heng silently walked over to the adjacent sofa and sat down. He placed his spear flat across his knees, his posture relaxed but ready to brace.
"Everyone had best find a place to sit down and hold tight," Himeko reminded them, her voice gentle but carrying the authority of the navigator. "Since Rekka is so confident in his calculations, we will just treat this as a minor, bumpy emergency drill."
Seeing the older members take it seriously, March 7th dared not linger by the window any longer. She quickly scurried over and sat right next to Himeko, her hands tightly gripping the armrests of the plush sofa.
"Sixty seconds."
The Parlor Car fell completely quiet. Without the usual banter, everyone could clearly hear the steady, rhythmic hum of the Express's spatial engine driving them forward.
"Thirty seconds."
The stars outside blurred into streaks of light.
"Twenty seconds."
"Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven..."
As Rekka counted down, March 7th nervously chewed her lower lip, her eyes darting back and forth between the window and Rekka's oversized head.
"Three. Two. One."
Rumble!
A heavy, shuddering vibration tore through the floorboards. The tea in Himeko's cup sloshed violently over the rim. It was precisely on time. But exactly as Rekka had calculated, the violent shaking did not last long, nor did it breach the hull to cause any destructive impact. The entire collision process lasted less than ten seconds. When the dazzling, unbroken starry sky reappeared outside the window, the violent vibration inside the carriage smoothed out into the usual gentle hum.
March 7th let out a massive breath, slumping back against the cushions. "Whoa... I honestly thought you were just making things up to mess with us..."
The intercom crackled to life. [Attention passengers! The Express has just sustained a kinetic impact from an unidentified mass! However, please rest assured, the Astral Express is completely unharmed, and all structural indicators are normal! Pom-Pom is currently conducting a complete exterior check, Pom!]
"See? I told you it was fine," Rekka said, his face entirely unbothered.
Himeko wiped the spilled tea from her saucer with a napkin. "Rekka, this ability of yours to predict the future... exactly how far ahead can you see?"
"Fifteen minutes at the absolute maximum," Rekka replied. "Any further than that, and my cerebral cortex will literally overheat and burn out."
"Fifteen minutes..." Dan Heng muttered, his eyes narrowing. "That is still an incredibly powerful tactical advantage."
Predicting the future in real-time, and being able to see more than ten minutes ahead in a combat scenario—this was an absurdly overpowered cheat.
But in reality, Rekka knew this was not entirely predicting the future. It was much closer to the concept of 'as you speak, so it becomes.' The future would actively gravitate toward the specific direction he predicted. He chose the path the timeline would take, and reality would warp to develop along the lines of his observation.
"Uncle Yang, let us recall the Schrödinger's Cat theory," Rekka said, turning his large head toward the senior Trailblazer. "Future events operate on a similar principle. When you do not observe the future, it remains a chaotic, undetermined variable. You cannot definitively say how the timeline will unfold. But the moment you observe the future, the wave function collapses, and reality will develop strictly in the direction of your prediction."
While the younger members of the Express did not know who Schrödinger was, Welt Yang knew the man personally from his home world.
Welt's eyes widened slightly behind his lenses. "You are saying... it is not that you can see the future, but rather that your act of observation is actively shaping the future?"
"Exactly," Rekka nodded, the motion looking slightly comical given the sheer size of his cranium.
Then, without changing his tone, Rekka dropped a bomb. "Genius Society Number Four will cause my accidental death shortly after this drug wears off. She clearly knows she cannot kill me right now while my brain is operating at this capacity, so she will choose to act the moment my drug effects end."
The warm, comfortable air in the carriage seemed to instantly freeze.
March 7th's relieved smile stiffened on her face. Dan Heng's grip tightened around his spear shaft. Welt and Himeko both snapped their attention to him, their expressions turning entirely grim.
"What did you just say?" Himeko asked, her voice dropping an octave.
"The woman in the candy-colored long dress. Polka Kakamu. She controls probability," Rekka explained calmly, as if discussing the weather. "As long as there is a minuscule, theoretical possibility of an event occurring, she can force that probability to become one hundred percent. For example, the chance of a pen slipping from your fingers and perfectly stabbing through your own heart while writing is extremely low, but it is technically not zero. That is exactly how she will kill me."
March 7th jumped up from the sofa. "What do you mean, an extremely low probability becomes one hundred percent? What do you mean you will die?! Can't you predict the future? Just predict a future where you don't die!"
"No! You can't just sit here waiting to die!" She waved her arms frantically. "Let's go find Herta! She is a Genius too, she definitely has a way to stop this! Or we can Warp right now! We can jump to the other side of the galaxy so she can't find us!"
"We cannot escape," Rekka shook his head, his voice steady. "She manipulates the very fabric of probability. As long as something has a theoretical possibility of happening, even one in a hundred billion, she can make it inevitable. No matter which remote corner of the universe we Warp to, the exact right sequence of fatal accidents will occur. Unless..."
"Unless what?" Dan Heng demanded, leaning forward.
"Unless I die once more right now, and completely forget the 'knowledge beyond the boundary of knowledge' that I accidentally recalled due to the Brain Development Potion," Rekka stated.
The room fell silent again.
"Is that truly the only way?" Welt asked, his voice heavy with concern.
"Not necessarily, but it will save us a massive amount of trouble," Rekka said. "There is another method. There is exactly one person in the universe who can completely nullify her probability manipulation."
"...Who?" Himeko asked.
"Genius Society Number One, Zandar One Kuwabara. The creator of the Aeons. And before you ask, no, that is not a rumor. He literally created Nous."
"But Zandar has long since vanished from the universe, leaving no written records whatsoever," Welt said in a deep, measured voice. "No one knows where he went, or even if he is still alive."
"Zandar himself passed away a very long time ago," Rekka stated matter-of-factly.
An unsolvable dead end.
Rekka deliberately did not mention that Zandar also had an automaton clone wandering the cosmos, simply because they had absolutely no way to find it in the short time they had left.
Dan Heng stood up, his boots clicking against the floorboards as he walked over to Rekka's side. He looked down at the chaotic Trailblazer. "Are you absolutely certain this is the only way?"
"It is the only way to guarantee the safety of the Astral Express," Rekka corrected him, looking up to meet Dan Heng's gaze. "If any of you get involved in this, she might turn her target toward you. Manipulating probability makes it far too easy to involve innocent bystanders in a chain reaction of accidents. As long as you all keep your distance from me, her target will remain solely on me."
"So, we are just supposed to keep our distance from you now?" March 7th's voice trembled slightly, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "You want us to just stand here and watch you die?"
"I am just asking you to watch me sleep," Rekka smiled, a trace of his usual mischievous warmth returning to his face. "It is only an hour. It will be quick. And do not worry, I have not resigned myself to fate just yet."
Sooner or later, he would make Polka Kakamu pay the ultimate price for trying to kill him today.
"Death is not scary. Death is merely a cool summer night."
Rekka pulled out his phone, tapped the screen, and began playing a grand, sweeping historical song about Guan Yu.
The New Three Kingdoms ranked competitive ladder was still waiting for him to climb it, after all. He couldn't let a little thing like an assassination attempt by a legendary Genius stop his gaming grind.
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