Genius Mage in a Cultivation World

"That fucking bitch!" Irea cursed once again, gathering her fingers into fists. "How about we eradicate her entire lineage? Since you are from the future, it should be a walk in the park for you to just kill her ancestors!" she proposed, propelled by the fury.

"Why should I punish innocent people for the crimes of their descendants?" Layn asked in return, shaking his head in denial. "And if you look at it from another point of view, the actions of that whore is what brought me to this time and your side, isn't that true?" Layn asked another question, putting a gentle smile on his face.

"Still…" Irea protested, leaning her head to the side. "Are you going to just let her off like that? Wait, I have a better question," Irea suddenly announced. "What happened to the people past the moment when you moved back in time? I understand your reasons to hold back right now, but just thinking about that whore getting away with what she did to you scoot-free…" Irea's hands tightened once again.

"Calm down, it's not like I care anymore. In fact, I'm actually grateful," Layn laughed up. "As silly as it might sound, it was because of her betrayal that I attempted to change the past. It's because of her being the whore she was that I could meet you. Overall, I would say I ended up profiting from her actions quite a lot, so let's just drop this topic for later."

'She is not going to forget that so easily, is she?' Layn asked himself in his thoughts even though he clearly knew the answer. As affectionate, kind, and cuddly as Irea was, he was more than aware of how determined and devoted she could be in some cases.

"Okay but still…" Irea suddenly exhaled a lungful of air, before putting her hands to the back and resting them against the ground. "To think that you came from the future… Do you realize how insane does that sounds to me?" She shook her head, making her long hair flutter at the wind.

"I know, right?" Layn nodded his head. "Now you should understand why I acted the way I acted when we first met. Right, speaking about that," Layn turned his head towards the girl, looking in her eyes with curiosity, "what did you think about me back then?"

Although not important, Layn was pretty curious about it. But that wasn't the only reason why he brought this topic. Right after bringing the hell that he went through in his personal past and burdening Irea with this knowledge, discussing some light topics like her perception of him during their first meeting could help diffuse the tense atmosphere between the two of them.

"Back then? Huh…" Irea attempted to reply, only to be pushed into a state of deep thought. "Something between a madman and a clown? A weirdo and a potentially dangerous cultivator from the lands unknown?"

After attempting to answer, Irea moved her hands back to their natural position before leaning her entire body to the side and resting her head on Layn's lap. For a few moments, she rustled around to find the perfect spot before finally settling down.

"But you don't need to find some other topics to take my mind off your past. Rather than that, how about you tell me how the world will look in the future?" Irea proved that she wasn't as naive as to let Layn manipulate her around like that, even if it was for what he perceived to be her own good.

"A world of the future, huh?" Layn closed his eyes after repeating Irea's words. For a moment, he just immersed himself in his memories, trying to figure out the easiest way to answer Irea's question.

"You see, first thing first, in the future, the world will be far more advanced. Be it cultivation, later called magic, technology, or literally anything else, it will stand far above what is accessible today. And because of that, not only the quality of life improved for everyone, from the simple peasants all the way to the influential powerhouses, but the population itself soared beyond the numbers you could deem possible in the current state of the world." Layn explained, trying his best to make his explanation as simple and to the point as possible.

"Population soared? By how much? Twice? Thrice?" Irea asked to clarify the picture in her mind.

"I can't really answer that without knowing how many people populates this world in the current times, can I?" Layn answered while smiling in response. "But if we take the city we escaped into account… The entire city would be no more but just a single district within the metropolis of the future." Layn coughed, before rustling Irea's hair. "It wasn't that strange for major cities to reach population crossing over millions if not tens of millions."

Irea tensed up. Her entire body froze as if she just heard something mindboggling.

'Well, from her perspective, such a huge number of people should be inconceivable, so it's no wonder she is surprised,' Layn thought before Irea suddenly brought her head up from his lap so that she could sit on it instead. Pressing her body at Layn's chest, she rested her head on his shoulder before turning silent for a moment.

"Doesn't that mean we should start working hard to bring our population up?" Her tone turned sweet, as her hands started to roam across Layn's back.

"Heh, it's not like that. For most of history, the population remained roughly the same. In fact, it exploded during a single, specific period of time, only to slow down and even start decreasing once we reached the times I witnessed personally." Layn answered while patting Irea's back. Even though her invite was pretty obvious, they were still out in the open, with Layn's mercenaries bound to start returning at any time.

And given his promise not to provoke their own urges, Layn had to hold himself back a bit. 

"Wait, what?" Irea froze once again, before pushing her upper body away a bit and looking Layn right in the eyes. "What do you mean by that?"

"Actually, this part of our history is recorded pretty well. After the last disaster that changed the world to what I know, there were only about two to three million people in the entire world." Layn's mood suddenly spoiled. Not because he was angry at his past or disappointed with it by any means, but because of what this single mention meant.

Because it wasn't like the human population was so small before the apocalypse. According to the scientific estimations, that apocalypse was actually an extinction event, leaving even less than a single human out of every hundred that was alive during the massive dying-out process. In fact, some estimates brought the pre-apocalypse population to numbers exceeding four billion…

'And that means if the future cannot be changed by going back to the past, then no matter how hard I will try, most of my lineage will be bound to die off.' Layn realized as a strange kind of pain overwhelmed his heart.

"If there were only two to three million people past that apocalypse event you spoke off, then how many people there were by the time you invoked that gran arcana of yours?" Irea asked, making Layn realize how he didn't give her enough context to understand the scale of the events he mentioned before.

"That's actually easy, while obviously not perfectly precise, the general tally of the humanity from my time… Reached fifty-three and a half billion. That explosive growth…" Layn stopped talking for a moment, himself still awed by how rapid those changes could be, "it only took two hundred years. Two hundred years, and a situation where military technology was stuck at the level where the number of troops was the deciding factor of the great conflict that torn the world into three warring factions."

For Layn, speaking about history was easy. He personally only witnessed the very end of this massive conflict that defined modern times. He had the privilege to witness the appearance of the magic incendiary that turned humans from the vital living force of every army into nothing more but fuel for the neverending fires.

Although from beyond the walls of his academy, he bore witness to the fall of the three major factions and the return of the old kingdoms and republics, the return of the relatively peaceful world.

'It's better if I won't tell her that the population could as well be more than four times as that, if not for nearly every second man in the entire world turning into a fodder for the conflict,' Layn thought with an honest dose of irony. 

"I understand…" Irea started, only to suddenly start shaking her head. "Or rather, that's what I wish I could say. But now I understand one thing."

The girl suddenly stood up from Layn's lap, before taking a look to the side. In the distance, a group of small dots started to turn into minuscule silhouettes that only continued to grow. 

Layn's mercenaries finally started to return. 

"There is no way for me to understand the scale of that future world, without seeing it with my very own eyes. That's why I want you to promise me something." Irea looked sternly into Layn's eyes. With their mercenaries approaching, they could talk freely about Layn's past for not much longer.

"Once you will become powerful enough, create this time-leaping spell once again." Irea smiled, before sitting right back on Layn's lap only to place a deep and affectionate kiss on his lips. "Even if it will be the last thing we will do, I want you to show me the world you were born in!"