Mist (Web Novel CN)

Eat, sleep, think.

The pace in the space capsule had suddenly slowed down.

The four worked hard together. Li Chun used the remaining photo albums and cut them out into cards while Song Qinglan was in charge of drawing. Ji Yushi used these cards and began to learn Big Beard’s language.

Ji Yushi indeed had a talent for languages. All the meanings and pronunciations of the symbols only needed to be seen once to be memorised. He was pretty much like a human recorder.

With the efficiency being so high, Big Beard was very excited. Ji Yushi only planned to study two hours at a time, but Big Beard would always deliberately draw it out longer. Every time it happened; Ji Yushi felt that Big Beard was just like his class teacher from high school.

During the rest of the time, Ji Yushi and Song Qinglan would analyse their situation.

Using the time flow rate of known locations such as the rainforest, space capsule and the city, they tried to find a balancing point.

Ji Yushi had many different methods of calculation. Using his communicator to form a projection, the calculations he wrote grew and grew and became longer and longer and very soon, Song Qinglan couldn’t keep up.

There was no sun here. Except for the clock which was still running, it was difficult for them to tell when it was time to rest.

Occasionally, Song Qinglan would find Ji Yushi asleep at the table.

Ji Yushi’s desire to return back to their time was very strong.

At the ‘transfer station’, the Tianqiong system once responded to the question of why they were chosen: Their chance of success was higher than the average across all guardian squads.

Song Qinglan knew that this chance of success had a lot to do with Ji Yushi joining their squad.

In the afternoon two days later, Zhou Mingxuan really fell onto the mountain of garbage.

Following the earth-shattering noise, Big Beard got his chain and cart ready in preparation to pick up more garbage.

Song Qinglan went with him. When Big Beard was about to tie Zhou Mingxuan up with the chain, Song Qinglan stopped him, “Don’t. I’ll do it myself. Anyone who passes through you would have lost a layer of their skin.”

Big Beard didn’t understand but he could guess Song Qinglan’s meaning. He blew his beard and said, “Mengkalawuliqi!”

After saying that, he turned around and left.

Song Qinglan didn’t know why this big guy was angry, but he didn’t pay much heed to the other party’s strangeness. He picked up Zhou Mingxuan and placed him in the cart. On the way back, Zhou Mingxuan opened his eyes in daze.

Zhou Mingxuan’s physical fitness wasn’t bad. Although he couldn’t move at such a low temperature, he could still speak, “Cap Song…..Why is it so dark?”

After speaking, he fell unconscious again.

Aurora flashed. Glowing flowers bloomed on both sides of the road. Song Qinglan suddenly had a thought.

Back at the space capsule, Li Chun excitedly rushed up to settle Zhou Mingxuan down. The big guy however was nowhere in sight.

Ji Yushi was still writing out formulas and there was a pot of coffee next to him.

“Cap Song.” Ji Yushi raised his head, “What’s wrong?”

Song Qinglan was still standing. From his perspective, Ji Yushi’s act of raising his head to look up at him made his eyes even rounder and more vivid.

Inadvertently, Song Qinglan felt a strange feeling inside him again.

He restrained those emotions and sat down next to Ji Yushi, “Our mission is the Repairer of Time. To put it simply, it is to fix the loopholes in time. Is it possible that this mission has nothing to do with the flow of time?”

The two sat side by side. Ji Yushi showed a puzzled expression, “Has nothing to do with the flow of time?”

Song Qinglan curled up his lips, “What I mean is, Advisor Ji, could we have overestimated Tianqiong? Perhaps it isn’t as smart as we thought.”

Song Qinglan believed that the so-called ‘Repairer of Time’ was the same as the ‘Chaser of Darkness’ that they needed to complete in their last Ouroboros mission. They were both in fact very simple and clear.

“The system is just a system after all. Even if it has self-awareness, it wouldn’t play dumb riddles with us for our missions.” Song Qinglan said, “It at best would play some tricks when assigning the missions but it would be in accordance to how a machine would think, not crafty like humans.”

Ji Yushi picked up the coffee on the side and took a sip. He subconsciously licked away the residue on his lips.

Song Qinglan looked away, “When I was looking for Old Zhou just now, I suddenly thought of a question. Why was it so dark around the space capsule? It also didn’t have any mirroring while the other places were the complete opposite.”

With the space capsule as the centre, the surroundings were all dark and there were no mirror projections above, below or on either side.

As for the rainforest and city, they were bright and had mirror projections.

Time flow around the space capsule was normal.

The opposite was true elsewhere.

This question opened up a new way of thinking for Ji Yushi. He let out a soft ‘ah’, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

It was clear that Ji Yushi was a little annoyed. He had his brows furrowed and he even forgot to drink the coffee he had brought to his lips.

Ji Yushi thought for a while, “…..Why is it normal around the space capsule?”

Suddenly, Ji Yushi thought of a possibility. His eyes lit up, “Is it because of that moment of darkness?”

As he said that he raised his hand and closed the diagram projected from the communicator. He once again made some gestures in the air with his hands just like when he explained Ouroboros to help the other understand and also help himself sort out his thoughts.

New thoughts quickly appeared in his mind, “Based on our experience and your observations over the past few days, we can be certain that the space near the space capsule is surrounded by a completely dark matter and when we go to a place with a different rate in time flow, we must pass through that. There are also glowing flowers near the space capsule that are not found in either the rainforest or the city. That flower emits a special light to illuminate the surrounding environment so the time flow near the space capsule is normal. We can then conclude that the difference in time must be related to the darkness we pass through.”

Song Qinglan waited quietly for him to continue, not wanting to interrupt his thoughts.

Ji Yushi drew a circle on the projection to represent the space capsule and a circle of dark matter was drawn around it. He suddenly revealed a smile, “I think Einstein’s coffin lid might not be able to hold him down.”

He turned around, “Cap Song, the theory of general relativity states that objects of large masses can cause a distortion in time and space. Dark matter is an example of that, but dark matter does not interact with electromagnetic waves and it also does not emit light, so we are unable to use our naked eyes or any instruments to detect it. Of course, that is different from our current situation, but we may be able to borrow such a theory.”

Ji Yushi quickly drew a picture in the air and explained, “Look, the area near the space capsule is very dark and you feel very heavy when you enter it. This is because there are many of such matter contained in there. If this dark circle of unidentified matter really is the culprit affecting the time and space and causing this distortion—–”

Using the theory of general relativity to think about this world, Einstein probably really wouldn’t be able to be held down by his coffin lid.

“We have to disperse it.” Song Qinglan understood Ji Yushi’s meaning and didn’t have an issue with such a far-stretched guess, “Just like the places near the space capsule, we should fill the darkness with special light.”

And that light referred to the relatively inconspicuous glowing flowers.

“There are many loopholes,” Ji Yushi said, “but it is worth a try.”

*

The site to test out was the city just outside the outer hatch of the space capsule. As soon as they stepped out of the hatch, the first thing they were met with was darkness.

Everyone did as they had agreed on earlier and, without waiting for Zhou Mingxuan to wake up, they went out to pick the glowing flowers.

What should’ve been a journey of solving the mystery behind this mysterious world had turned into picking flowers. Everyone found it a little ridiculous.

But it didn’t hurt to give it a try. Very soon, they returned back to the space capsule with the flowers they had collected.

Big Beard had already returned. Seeing that they were going to open the outer hatch again, he was very angry and shouted out a few times.

Ji Yushi had already reached a stage where he could converse with him a little and he was barely able to calm him back down with some simple words. Big Beard decided to stand back and watch.

Li Chun took the initiative to take on the hard work. When Big Beard opened the hatch, he threw out the glowing flowers one after another.

The faint light slowly grew, and it soon illuminated about half a metre of the dark path before them, revealing some of the mirrored city.

Perhaps it was because there was still too little light to illuminate the place completely, the effect wasn’t obvious.

Li Chun said, “What should we do? We have already picked all the nearby flowers. Even if we add up the ones on the mountain of garbage, it won’t be enough.”

Big Beard seemed to understand what they were trying to do. He gestured non-stop to Ji Yushi.

Ji Yushi translated, “Big Beard is saying that if we need more, we can plant it.”

“Plant?” Song Qinglan who stood in front of the hatch didn’t understand.

“Heavens, how long and how many will we need to plant?!” Li Chun was shocked, “When we’re done, we’ll probably be white bones.”

“Big Beard says that this kind of flower can bloom in a week.” Ji Yushi voiced his own thoughts, “But that is one week near the space capsule. What if we took them to the rainforest?”

The time in the rainforest was almost 24 times faster than the time here.

In other words, they only needed less than a day to be able to harvest more flowers.

“Alright.” Song Qinglan agreed without hesitation, “Chun’er and I will go gather the plants first. We will go together when Old Zhou wakes up.”

Planting flowers in the crevice of time and space —– This was something no one would’ve even thought about.

But the people here no longer felt that anything was impossible in this world.

Song Qinglan left while carrying Shen Mian. He didn’t look like someone going to plant flowers and instead looked like he was heading out to fight monsters.

Ji Yushi on the other hand remained and communicated with Big Beard.

He had to figure out why Big Beard and the others came to this place. He intuitively felt that Big Beard still had many clues waiting to be discovered by them.

Big Beard opened a new can of beer, tilted his head back and downed half its contents in one go. There was foam residue on his beard.

This time, they were going to talk about how many people Big Beard had met here and where those people had gone.

“Knock, knock.”

The two paused.

“Knock, knock.”

The knocking still sounded.

They both looked towards the small room. Zhou Mingxuan hadn’t woken up yet, so it couldn’t be him.

But that knock did come from the space capsule.

Big Beard blinked his blue eyes a few times. Seeing Ji Yushi pull out a silver pistol from under his sofa cushion, he was dumbfounded.

Ji Yushi had already found his Diamond Bird a long time ago.

Nothing Big Beard hid could escape from his eyes.

Ji Yushi made a gesture for him to keep quiet and then very proficiently loaded Diamond Bird up. He clearly came off as a weak person but the moment he picked up the gun, it made it hard for one to look away.

The two slowly moved in the direction of the knocking. It was coming from the outer hatch.

Ji Yushi was on guard while Big Beard opened the hatch.

There was a young man standing outside. He appeared to be about the same age as Ji Yushi.

He wore a black combat uniform with a 12 on his chest. He was slightly taken aback, “Who are you guys?”

Ji Yushi was also taken aback.

At this moment, there were also footsteps behind him. Li Chun hurriedly rushed in, “Advisor Ji! Big trouble!!”

His tone was filled with panic and fear.

Ji Yushi had no choice but to leave that man to Big Beard and quickly returned to the control room.

There, he saw a miniature version of Song Qinglan who looked only about seven or eight years old with a particularly ugly expression.

Ji Yushi had lived for twenty-five years and for the first time, he understood the phrase people would often use to describe his current mood: He felt like his head would explode.