Chapter 95 Chapter 95 (2/2)
Everyone, “Roger!”
Song Qinglan pulled out his military knife and carved a line onto the ground:
Turn off energy supply of the two bases.
Team 5.
Ji Yushi now understood—-It turns out that they were Team 5, the first team to disappear from the cycle!
No wonder Song Qinglan stared thoughtfully at the box of medicine back in the bookstore. It was because they had already analysed why it could exist at the same time as the box of medicine in Team 3. What he did earlier had accidentally fulfilled the conditions, regardless of cause and effect, but also becoming the cause and effect of each other!
After completing the Ouroboros mission, the memories of their selves in Teams A and B had merged. They didn’t have any memories from their other selves that had disappeared because of the paradox.
Ji Yushi’s felt his scalp go numb.
He didn’t expect that he would be able to witness this moment.
But now….
Why did he return to this cycle?
Or had he never left the cycle in the first place?
*
On the other end.
Song Qinglan had also returned to the Ouroboros mission.
Another traversing warning, another nightmarish PU-31. The first thing Song Qinglan did after landing was to open the door to find someone.
“Cap Song!”
“Is Chun’er going to throw u—–”
“Bleagh!!”
As the teammates joked and complained, Song Qinglan only kicked the door shut when he passed Li Chun’s capsule, “If you want to vomit, vomit in your own home. Who told you to fucking slack off and only sit on the pendulum twice during this long vacation?”
He then strode towards Ji Yushi’s capsule.
The door opened.
The person inside was handsome and slim. Even the act of stepping out of the capsule was very good looking.
Song Qinglan stared fixatedly at the other party’s face. Having that person appear before him again alive and well, he almost couldn’t control himself. Right now, even just taking a breath sent pain throughout his body. But when the other party raised his head and looked over, his heart went cold.
Those beautiful eyes were polite and distant. He was even a little surprised to see him outside his capsule, “Cap Song.”
There was no excitement, no joy, and no trace of shock of coming back to life after dying.
Just like a video playback, Song Qinglan even felt that the situation was unreal. He suspected that the so-called Tianqiong parent system only simply turned time back and there was in fact no time anchor belonging only to him and Ji Yushi set up. Everything here was familiar; it was just one of those countless cycles.
Seeing that he wasn’t moving, Ji Yushi then said, “Thank you for pulling me out of the car.”
JI Yushi was referring to the time when Song Qinglan pulled him out of the car after they ran into the wire fence outside the bookstore.
Song Qinglan couldn’t breathe.
Which cycle was this? The third one? Why didn’t he remember having a conversation like this before?
Only God knew how much he didn’t want to complete this mission. Regardless of which Ji Yushi the one before him was, he just wanted to give him a fierce hug until the other person was almost blended into his own body. The pain in his chest however reminded him that he couldn’t do this. Even if the details and dialogue had changed, he couldn’t change the general direction of this ‘past’. He had to let the mission develop according to how it went in his memory.
Ji Yushi noticed the clenched fists.
He asked, “What’s wrong?”
What’s wrong?
He could fucking see him but couldn’t touch him.
……
Song Qinglan suppressed his irritation, “Nothing.”
He turned around and managed to barely restrain himself from destroying the current situation. Following his memories, he assigned out tasks.
He could only patiently analyse the situation himself. Tianqiong had named this time anchor【Overload】. It referred to the fact that it had exceeded the original mission plan. Having stuffed two people into the original cycle, there was a possibility that he wasn’t reborn into the same cycle as Ji Yushi. He had to wait it out and see.
He had already gone through an even more difficult period, so something like this was nothing.
The person behind him however wasn’t cooperating.
Ji Yushi stepped forward and stood very close to him. Song Qinglan could almost feel the faint cold air coming from his body, “Cap Song.”
Ji Yushi spoke every word very clearly and his voice was also very nice. When he called him like this, it always made him feel special.
Song Qinglan hardened his throat, “What?”
Ji Yushi said, “Go straight to the bookstore. There was a clue I wasn’t able to finish checking.”
Song Qinglan agreed.
They quickly left the forest. The route was the same as what he remembered. Ji Yushi gave the teammates who had not yet figured out the situation an explanation regarding the time anchor and also his initial guesses about the meaning of the rule ‘Death elimination’. Even if it was not the same as what it turned out to be, the current Ji Yushi was still very amazing.
They drove the spacecar out.
At the intersection, they encountered a car that managed to avoid them.
Song Qinglan finally figured out that they were Team 4. In other words, he and the Ji Yushi next to him were Team B in the latter half of the cycle.
The more he thought about it, the colder his expression became—–In the end, he had to continue until the end of this cycle, all the way until he reached Golden Crow No. 2 before he could move to the next cycle.
As remembered, after separating from the rest of their teammates at Runjin Building, he and Ji Yushi found themselves surrounded by zombies on their way to the bookstore and were forced to hide in a power distribution room.
The small and cramped room was completely dark.
The two of them almost had to have their faces pressed against each other to be able to stand properly in the room. Ji Yushi was stepping on his foot.
It was both tolerable and intolerable.
“Advisor Ji.” Song Qinglan turned his head to the side and almost sniffed Ji Yushi’s hair, “You’re stepping on me.”
He could feel Ji Yushi’s body stiffen.
He originally did it to satisfy his own evil desires and wanted to take advantage of Ji Yushi but because of how close they were, his heart was beating wildly.
Before the other party could move his feet, he said, “Don’t.”
Ji Yushi’s actions stopped.
“I’ll give you this opportunity to step on me so that next time you can remember something nice. Don’t always hold grudges.”
As he said this, he tried to see Ji Yushi’s face in the darkness. The current situation reminded him of the last time he was at Ji Yushi’s place. When he came out of the bathroom, Ji Yushi had pulled him down into his posture and kissed him.
Remember something nice.
Don’t always remember who he gave the dice to, how he mistakenly thought he was involved in 4P, and how he liked a pretty little girl in kindergarten.
Unfortunately, the current Ji Yushi wasn’t his one. He didn’t understand the deep meaning behind his words.
Just as Song Qinglan said that, pain came from his foot. Ji Yushi didn’t adjust the strength and just answered, “Oh.”
Alright, it was still too early.
This guy still remembered the fact that Song Qinglan had pressed him against the bookshelf in the last cycle, making his wrist become bruised.
Song Qinglan gritted his teeth, “Having said that, you’re stepping really hard.”
Ji Yushi finally moved his foot away and apologised, “Sorry, it wasn’t deliberate.”
Song Qinglan, “I forgive you.”
Unknown to the others, he was actually willing to be stepped on a hundred times.
It didn’t take long for them to reunite with the teammates in Team 3. After competing with his other self, the two of them and the rest of the team members from Team 3 formed Team B and headed for Golden Crow No. 1.
In a place unknown to the others, Song Qinglan observed the Ji Yushi in Team A.
The moment the other party appeared through the binoculars, his heart also hurt.
Wearing a white T-shirt, the man sitting on the balcony had just been injured and there was a bullet wound on his abdomen. That scene slowly overlapped with that person who was mistakenly shot in the chest.
“What’s wrong?” Someone spoke up.
“Huh?” He lowered the binoculars and looked back.
Ji Yushi next to him asked, “Cap Song, your expression suddenly didn’t look good. Did something happen?”
“No.” Song Qinglan smiled. He looked at the other party’s clean and pale face, “I just wanted to say that we will all return alive.”
……
Later, they got in touch with their other selves in Team A.
The teammates worked hand in hand. Alongside Ji Yushi’s analysis and calculation, Song Qinglan cooperated and turned off the energy transmitters for Golden Crow No. 1.
Towards Cap Song’s sudden cooperation with Ji Yushi to the point that he would do anything he said, the other teammates expressed shock. They didn’t understand what happened between them.
During the call between the two teams, Ji Yushi reminded him, “Cap Song, fourth row, the sixth from the left.”
Song Qinglan subconsciously replied, “Righto, I’m on it.”
As soon as those words were spoken, he remembered how he found the way he and Ji Yushi from Team B interacted a little strange back when he overheard it when he was in Team A.
Even Ji Yushi was a little stunned when he heard his answer. He glanced back at him for a moment.
Ji Yushi however had a tendency to keep to himself. He didn’t say anything about Song Qinglan’s change and just silently continued to calculate, “Seventh row, second from the left.”
Everything seemed to be destined.
Which cycle was covering over which cycle?
Song Qinglan no longer dwelled on this problem.
After finishing everything they needed to do in Golden Crow No. 1, he brought the team to Golden Crow No. 2 to help Team A.
Finally, they returned to the capsule and completed the smaller cycle.
Before the black wall arrived, Song Qinglan made a wish. He hoped that he could be reborn into the same cycle as Ji Yushi.
When Song Qinglan appeared at the new anchor point and faced the Ji Yushi who still didn’t remember everything that had happened between them, he just wanted to curse at the Tianqiong parent system a million times.
Again.
And again.
In each cycle, the person he encountered wasn’t the Ji Yushi he wanted.
Song Qinglan couldn’t control himself anymore.