Chapter 390: Does It Really Matter Whether It's a Comic Book World?
Ethan's eyes stayed locked on Loki's face, full of tangled emotions: curiosity, confusion, and a barely perceptible trace of fear.
His silence wasn't for lack of anything to say. The thoughts churning in him were like a sea in a gale, impossible to calm.
He wanted answers from Loki, to every mystery about himself, about the future, about this world that seemed so familiar and yet was so utterly strange.
"Loki," Ethan finally said, his voice low and firm, "what exactly do you mean by 'the last time we met'? And what do you mean, my previous life?"
"Don't be so tense. It's true that you don't belong to this world. But at the same time, you do." Loki's equivocal answer left Ethan completely lost.
Ever since he'd set foot in this place, Ethan had felt as if a giant hand were steering him, as if someone had been pushing him forward all the way here.
Hearing Loki's words, he felt even more strongly that there was a great secret inside him, and perhaps today it would finally be revealed.
Loki went on to explain. "In your previous life, your soul truly didn't belong to this world. But in this life, your soul has been imprinted with this world, what you call the Marvel world. In this life, you are a Marvel native through and through. Do you understand?"
"If you don't believe me, here's another piece of evidence. You've visited so many universes across the multiverse, yet you've never met a variant of yourself. That's because from beginning to end, you have been a special existence."
At that, Ethan understood. He really was a transmigrator, but not in this life. His previous life had been the transmigrator. For some reason there had been a second life, and he'd been reborn into the Marvel world.
But how did Loki know?
What had his previous life been like? Why didn't he have any memories of it?
And then what were the memories in his head?
Besides, from the way Loki talked, he knew he was living in a comic book world. Didn't that bother him at all?
Loki's laughter echoed through the still air. There was playfulness and depth in it, as though it could see into the essence of all things.
He gently swayed the branches in his hand. Each seemed to carry endless stories and possibilities, the whole cosmos as seen through the unique eyes of a god of time and mischief.
"Comics? Hmph. What a narrow definition."
His words carried a hint of disdain, and yet they were full of philosophy.
"In this vast multiverse, who can say for certain what is real and what is illusion?"
"Perhaps what we consider reality is nothing more than a series of paintings by the brush of some higher-dimensional being, and you are merely a character walking through the painting."
"And how can you be sure that the universe you came from before wasn't a so-called comic, or something someone else wrote?"
He looked up into the distance, his eyes shining with curiosity about the unknown and a longing to explore it.
"How can you be sure that your every choice, your every breath, hasn't already been carefully arranged by some power? Like an actor on the stage: even knowing the script, he must still perform along the set path."
"But it's precisely this uncertainty that gives life meaning." Loki's tone turned gentle and firm.
"Whether this world is real or not, as long as we perceive it with our hearts and experience it with love, it is real. Because whether something is real is merely a product of subjective perception. Where the heart leads, there reality lies."
He waved the branches in his hand lightly, as though steering the flow of countless timelines.
"Look at these timelines. They intertwine and collide, forming our complicated, ever-changing world. And I, though I can glimpse a little of it, cannot fully control it.
"Because every living being has free will, and their choices create countless possibilities."
"The same goes for these timelines in my hand. When they make a new change, a new branch is born. All of this is proof."
"I'm not like Kang. Kang wrote the script himself, and humanity could only perform it. I'm willing to let humanity write its own script."
The truth was, Loki didn't much care whether this was a so-called comic book world. For someone at his level, whether or not they were controlled by humans no longer really mattered.
To the people of the other Marvel universes, wasn't he himself one of the so-called "writers"?
When he was bored, his greatest amusement was arranging scripts for these humans.
Even if you told them it was all a script, they wouldn't believe it. If things turned out well, they would believe it was all thanks to their own hard work.
If things turned out badly, they would complain that fate was unfair. They still wouldn't believe any of it had been arranged. They refused to believe that everything they had struggled and fought for had been decided long ago.
That was human nature.
Take Deadpool as an example. He was a being who could break the fourth wall. So what if he knew this universe was a comic? The Deadpools still lived quietly and dutifully in this universe.
The Deadpools still hustled to make a living. Knowing meant nothing. The craziest one of all had simply become the Killer Deadpool and started slaughtering the whole Marvel Universe.
How could Loki not know about the Killer Deadpool? That extreme Killer Deadpool was trying to rewrite everything through violence, yet he was only one more link already written into the script. Every act of rebellion was nothing more than part of the universe correcting itself.
What's more, he was destined never to succeed. No matter how many times he tried, someone would always rise up to stop him. And even if he did succeed, the entire multiverse would simply reboot.
So was it really better to know you were a character in a comic?
Loki didn't think so. Sometimes, the less people knew, the better. He believed that ignorance could sometimes be a kind of happiness. It let people focus on the life in front of them and treasure every chance to choose.
Ethan heard Loki's answer without committing either way. It was true: who could guarantee that the universe he'd transmigrated from wasn't also a so-called comic book world? Even now, Ethan couldn't be sure his transmigration hadn't been arranged as well.
He couldn't even be sure the System hadn't been arranged by someone. For a moment, Ethan felt a little lost.
If things really were as Loki said, was his System, and everything about these so-called Friends, being controlled by someone too?
Ethan did not like the feeling of being controlled, not even at a one-in-ten-thousand chance.
But from the look of things, his appearance and the System had both been arranged. To be precise, they had been arranged by his previous self.
Ethan urgently wanted a way to break free of all this, and he knew Loki might have one.
"So is there any way to transcend it?"
"There should be. But I don't know it. You do, though. Or rather, your previous life did."
"Unfortunately, he failed."
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