There is no guarantee for the lottery? So what?

#171 - Chapter 171: The Whale King

"Fang Sheng, oh, Fang Sheng, you almost got eaten by a fish while fishing! Luckily, Gou Tongxue told me about it, or I would have thought you went to find other young ladies."

"Are you hungry? How about eating fish tonight? I'll give you a chance to get revenge."

"Okay, let's eat fish then."

Watching Tan Zuoyin walk out the door, Qi Jing began to recall what had just happened.

Only now did his heart start to beat wildly, faster and faster.

He took a few deep breaths to finally suppress the fear.

Witnessing the entire process of someone being killed, anyone would be scared the first time they saw something like that.

Especially since that person died right in front of him.

Death is truly a terrifying thing.

Qi Jing had always thought he was someone who wasn't afraid of death, but the truth told him that he was just bluffing, having never seen real death.

As a fortunate person whose grandparents were all alive and well, Qi Jing's understanding of death was still limited to the funeral halls when unfamiliar old people in the village passed away.

At that time, he didn't experience any psychological fluctuations. He didn't understand why some people cried so sorrowfully, while others were silent but had eyes filled with despair.

But this afternoon, he heard about the sorrow of losing loved ones from Grandpa Gou Dehao, and witnessed the helplessness in the face of death, and the fragility of life.

Death is truly a fear etched into human genes.

He seemed to understand why so many people yearned for immortality.

Reluctance to part with loved ones, attachment to the secular world, longing for the future, and clinging to oneself.

How can one avoid death?

Lying low, lying low is the best. Nothing will happen if you stay at home.

But I still want to see this vast other world. How can I achieve both?

Qi Jing fell into a deep sleep while pondering.

......

An unfamiliar ceiling.

When he woke up again, he found himself lying under a pure white ceiling.

Oh, I was bitten by a jellyfish and hospitalized.

Raising his hand, he found that his body could move again, no longer in the state of shock he had been in earlier.

"You're awake? Here, eat fish. This is the biggest fish I picked out from the hospital cafeteria. It has no bones, so you can eat it heartily."

Tan Zuoyin grabbed Qi Jing's outstretched hand and squeezed his fingers.

"My wife is the best."

"Grandpa Gou is still watching."

"Ah?"

Qi Jing turned his head and saw Gou Dehao sitting on the bed next to him, watching them with a motherly smile.

"Good grandpa, you're awake."

"I'm awake, I woke up a long time ago. You eat your meal, don't mind this old man."

"Oh, have you eaten?"

"I ate a long time ago, the same fish soup as you."

"Oh."

Qi Jing turned his head and asked, "Zuoyin, have you eaten?"

"No, I was planning to eat with you. Here, take out your dining table and bowl."

Tan Zuoyin knew that Qi Jing had utensils specifically for eating in his space, as well as a pile of unwashed bowls and chopsticks, which he stored in a "pre-wash area" within the space.

He said that when he got home, he could take these out and let Qi's mother use her ability to wash them all at once, which would be super convenient.

Qi Jing took out a high-legged table from the space, spread a tablecloth on it, and placed the insulated pot from the bedside table on top.

Finally, he set out two bowls and two pairs of chopsticks.

"You guys are well-prepared. I should also put some pots and pans in my magic bag someday."

Gou Dehao watched Qi Jing conjure a large pile of things from the space, and remembered when he had been eating on the bed just now, holding a bowl in one hand and chopsticks in the other.

He was afraid of spilling a single drop on the sheets. If his mother were still alive, she would definitely scold him.

"My space is big, it can hold a lot. I estimate that even a small supermarket wouldn't be as complete as mine."

After explaining, Qi Jing asked:

"Good grandpa, how did that huge wave this afternoon happen?"

Now that he saw the fish soup, Qi Jing remembered what the culprit was that led to them being "assassinated" by the Time Jellyfish.

If it hadn't been for that monstrous wave, they wouldn't have gotten into the car, and they wouldn't have been pulled into the Time Memory without looking at what kind of fish they had caught.

Gou Dehao said, "Remember when I told you this afternoon that there are big guys in the Sea of Time?"

"Yeah," Qi Jing nodded.

"That big guy is the oldest and largest alien creature known to mankind. We call it the Time Whale King.

Let me describe it to you this way. [Bu Cai] and [Wen Huang] spent four years returning from the center of the Sea of Time, and that was with the time inside being slowed down so they could spend such a short amount of time.

This is enough to show how vast the Sea of Time is.

The Time Whale King is sleeping in the center of the Sea of Time, and that huge wave was caused by it turning over.

Even at such a distance, the huge wave was still overwhelming when it reached the edge of the Sea of Time. Do you understand how big it is now?"

Qi Jing imagined it, but couldn't imagine how big the creature that could create such a huge wave could be.

Could this guy be as big as the Earth?

"It doesn't matter if you don't understand, it's not important. Anyway, it doesn't move, so you won't encounter it."

Qi Jing took a sip of the fish soup and asked:

"It's so big, what does the Time Whale King eat?"

Gou Dehao replied:

"According to our information, the Time Whale King eats its past selves."

Seeing the confused expressions on Qi Jing and Tan Zuoyin's faces, Gou Dehao stroked his mustache and said:

"Time Whales are a very, very ancient race. They possess the power of time.

People who are eaten by them will be completely forgotten by this world, because they eat not only your 'present', but also your 'past'.

They don't age, they have no natural enemies, and they can completely digest all the food they eat, providing it to themselves.

Later, the Time Whale clan ate their way through the entire ocean, so there was no more food to fill them up. Thus, a civil war broke out.

They began to cannibalize, because eating a Time Whale was like eating all of its past meat, so they could stay full for a long time and grow very, very big.

Thus, the long civil war lasted for a very, very long time, so long that mountains and seas changed, and stars shifted.

The ocean, which they had emptied, also began to evolve new creatures. The Time Whales no longer had the energy to eat them, because only eating other Time Whales could satisfy their appetites.

In the end, only one Time Whale remained, the Time Whale King.

Because it was the last Time Whale, and it had already grown extremely huge, it had no food to fill its belly, so it could only eat its past selves to satisfy its hunger.

Time is constantly passing, and it is constantly creating new 'pasts', so it is also constantly eating.

Because once it stops, it will instantly consume all of its energy and starve to death in a very short time.

So it is trapped in the center of the Sea of Time, permanently stuck there, only occasionally turning over.

It can also be said that it stopped in a sea area, and the scattered power of time changed the environment of this sea area, forming the Sea of Time.

Until now, many creatures with the power of time have been produced there, like the Time Jellyfish and Time Porpoise that I caught."

So that's the reason the Sea of Time was formed.

After listening to Gou Dehao's explanation, Qi Jing realized just how big the Time Whale King was. It was an aggregate of a race that had eaten all the marine life in an era!