In Doctor Strange, at the final moment, the evil god Dormammu from the Dark Dimension invades the world. Doctor Strange uses the Time Stone to confront him, trapping Dormammu endlessly in a time loop. At that instant, Strange delivers the film’s most brilliant and amusing line: “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”
Once, twice, thrice… Dormammu, powerful enough to destroy the world, is eventually driven away by Strange’s utterly annoying tactic.
By comprehending this film, Ye Chong learned a time spell derived from Doctor Strange’s ability. It is named Dormammu’s Depression. Its effect is similar to the Time Gap that Ye Chong had mastered long ago, yet far easier to control. It can manipulate time within a limited range, forcing events to repeat inside a specific loop.
In the film, Doctor Strange can repeat time indefinitely because he relies on the overwhelming power of the Time Stone. Ye Chong, however, can only draw upon his own mana. Therefore, he cannot loop forever. Each reversion consumes a portion of his mana. Everything else can return to the starting point of the loop. Naturally, Ye Chong can selectively exclude certain things, preventing them from resetting. For example, the blood the demonic turtle has already lost.
Right now, blood is gushing wildly from the wound Ye Chong inflicted on the turtle. With each use of his time reversion, the blood that has already sprayed out is excluded from the reset. This means that although time returns to the previous moment, the lost blood cannot flow back into the turtle’s body.
Throughout the entire looping process, the demonic turtle keeps bleeding without pause.
What does this signify?
If Ye Chong keeps Dormammu’s Depression active, the demonic turtle will continue bleeding indefinitely…
…
“Young lady, I’ve come to bargain!” Ye Chong recalled the scene from the film and said this with a smile to the turtle-shell girl.
The turtle-shell girl had already noticed the temporal anomaly. She had clearly just killed Ye Chong and Boslily, yet now they stood before her completely unharmed. Time itself seemed disordered, but she could not detect any time-magic elements and therefore could not understand what was happening.
“You… you actually know time magic…” She was deeply shocked that Ye Chong possessed time magic. Throughout the ancient era, the age of gods, and the current age of sorcery, powerful mages and archmages had appeared in endless numbers, yet those capable of comprehending time magic could be counted on one hand.
This made her regard Ye Chong as even more dangerous. This human must die!
Thus, she once again unleashed her mighty Turtle-Blood Kill, transforming it into ten thousand blood dragons that charged towards Ye Chong and Boslily.
This time, Ye Chong and Boslily were utterly fearless. They offered no resistance and allowed the blood dragons to engulf them, calmly accepting death. Then, just as the turtle-shell girl believed she had finally eliminated Ye Chong and once more wore an expression of heartache as she began recalling the scattered turtle blood into her wound,
“Young lady, I’ve come to bargain!”
Ye Chong and Boslily appeared before her again. The wound that had just begun absorbing blood immediately erupted once more, spraying fresh torrents outward. Time had returned to the instant Ye Chong first injured the turtle-shell girl!
The turtle-shell girl experienced the disorientation of time magic yet again. She seemed noticeably weaker than before. A faint sense of unease rose in her heart, but upon seeing Ye Chong’s smug and detestable face, uncontrollable rage surged within her. She unleashed Turtle-Blood Kill once more!
Ten thousand blood dragons dove to slay Ye Chong.
And then…
“Young lady, I’ve come to bargain!”
Ye Chong and Boslily reappeared before the girl. In truth, being killed in every loop was not pleasant, but fortunately, when time reset, memories of the previous cycle also became muddled. The sensation of being devoured by blood dragons was no longer vivid; it felt like a fading nightmare. Both Ye Chong and Boslily possessed unbreakable wills, so such experiences could not truly harm them.
To endure a few nightmares of being swallowed by blood dragons in exchange for defeating the Beast God demonic turtle was an absolute steal.
The girl’s face had already turned pale, revealing obvious exhaustion. Her body felt hollowed out. The confusion caused by the temporal distortion prevented her from immediately grasping the full implications of what was happening.
Turtle-Blood Kill was her desperate ultimate technique. It consumed her own turtle blood to unleash devastating power. Her true body was colossal, so she possessed vast quantities of blood. Yet to kill terrifying experts like Ye Chong and Boslily, each use of Turtle-Blood Kill required an enormous volume of blood. That level of expenditure inflicted severe drain upon her every single time.
And now she had already used it three times!
“No… I cannot keep spending blood on Turtle-Blood Kill… my blood… I must hurry and recover it all!” the girl warned herself inwardly. Seeing Ye Chong and Boslily rise from the dead yet again, she did not rush to attack. Instead, she focused every ounce of strength on drawing the sprayed blood back into her demonic turtle body. That blood contained her power; it was the source of her strength. Every single drop was incomparably precious to her!
By now the entire sky of the Beast Garden had turned crimson, as though an upside-down ocean of blood hung overhead. The girl was startled. Unknowingly, she had already lost so much blood… She immediately employed a supreme technique to suck the blood ocean back into her wound. A crimson tornado appeared between heaven and earth… only for a mighty force to interrupt it moments later.
Time reverted.
The blood that had already left the giant turtle’s body did not revert with time and did not return inside, while fresh blood from the wound continued gushing out without end.
It was simply that unfair.
“Young lady, I’ve come to bargain!” Ye Chong smiled at her once more.
The girl now felt intense unease. Her body trembled uncontrollably. She had become terrifyingly weak, the weakness of catastrophic blood loss! She stared at Ye Chong with icy hatred and shrieked, “What on earth have you done… no, no, stop it at once! Stop… just tell me what you want me to do to make you stop!”
She used every bit of remaining strength to try sealing the gigantic wound, desperately attempting to halt the endless spray of turtle blood, but the injury inflicted by the One-Punch Heroic Spirit was utterly horrific. It would not heal easily.
“From now on, you will obey my commands and acknowledge me as your master!” Ye Chong said with a smile.
“For the peak ninth-rank Chaos Giant Turtle to recognise you as master? Impossible!” the girl shouted proudly and petulantly.
Time reverted.
The wound created by the One-Punch Heroic Spirit continued spraying blood. The entire Beast Garden had become a world of blood.
“Young lady, I’ve come to bargain,” Ye Chong said with a smile, looking at the girl. After so many loops, more than half his mana was already spent. He could perform at most two more reversions before he would have to release Dormammu’s Depression. Yet clearly, the damage the demonic turtle girl had suffered far exceeded his own. “From now on, you will obey my commands and acknowledge me as your master.”
The girl’s body was now half-collapsed on the ground. She seemed unable to stop the blood still gushing wildly. A layer of white mist enveloped her, as though she was rapidly dissipating. Perhaps she had grown so weak she could no longer maintain her human form…
“Agree, or I will keep the loop going. You may have a lot of blood, but I doubt you can last much longer, can you?” Ye Chong shouted loudly.
“You… you people…” The white mist completely shrouded the girl’s body. Her voice grew hurried and, somehow, several degrees younger and more tender… When the mist finally cleared, standing before Ye Chong and Boslily was a little girl who looked only three or four years old! Because her power had plummeted, her human form had shrunk to this toddler state?
She had now become a magical beast on the same level as Dragon Treasure?
“You’re all so mean…” The tiny girl looked at Ye Chong and Boslily, tears welling in her eyes as she cried out.
