Rubik’s Cube

Chapter 65

Ji Yushi’s heart which had been hanging from a thread seemed to have fallen in place as soon as he saw Song Qinglan.

It felt great reuniting with his teammate again. Ji Yushi almost forgot how he used to prefer acting alone.

“Cap Song?” Ji Yushi’s back hurt but he wasn’t angry, “I’ve always….been here?”

It wasn’t Song Qinglan but Cap Song.

His tone wasn’t especially warm but those who are more familiar with Ji Yushi could tell how happy he was to finally reunite with his teammate.

Despite being pressed against the wall, Ji Yushi didn’t struggle. He answered the question and then proceeded to comment on Song Qinglan’s appearance, “You’ve grown out a lot of stubble again!”

Just like in the Chaos mission, Ji Yushi was still neat and clean while Song Qinglan was the opposite. Tianqiong probably had a special liking to send Song Qinglan to a different distribution of time and it seemed to be particularly inclined in letting him develop a rough, manly appearance regardless of whether he himself liked it or not.

Song Qinglan hadn’t looked in the mirror for quite some time. His expression sank when he heard the comment.

Ji Yushi’s gleaming eyes fell onto Song Qinglan’s chin. He asked with confusion, “Have you been here for a long time?”

This distance allowed Song Qinglan to feel the warm breath from Ji Yushi. It made the gaze on his chin feel almost tangible.

Song Qinglan’s throat bobbed, “I’ve fucking been here for more than a week.”

When he was done saying this, his grip on Ji Yushi’s shoulder loosened and he took a few steps back.

“Advisor Ji!”

Song Qinglan was taller than him. As soon as he stepped aside, Ji Yushi only now saw that another two people had entered the room together with Song Qinglan.

One was Duan Wen with a stubble who was just as happy about the reunion while the other was —– Tall and fair, with a pair of peach blossom eyes, he wore the same black combat uniform they wore and there was a number ‘9’ written on his chest.

The young man nodded at him gracefully, “Hi.”

Ji Yushi, “……….”

This person was———-

Ji Yushi knew who it was. He wasn’t too surprised or in too much disbelief seeing him here. Tianqiong had hijacked Guardians who were in the middle of traversing to complete this multiplayer mission. It wasn’t a surprise to seeing other Guardians gathered here.

There was a saying that enemies meet on a narrow road. (KKnotes: One can’t avoid one’s enemy)

Ji Yushi just felt that, wasn’t it too much of a coincidence for them to run into the captain of the ninth squad?

The other party briefly greeted Ji Yushi.

What was suffocating was, although they weren’t in the same squad, they were Guardians from the same Jiang City branch, but neither Song Qinglan nor Duan Wen showed any intentions to introduce the two of them.

The other party didn’t feel embarrassed. He just stood there casually and allowed him to take him in.

Ji Yushi didn’t know him personally. His only knowledge of him came from Li Chun’s enthusiastic gossiping and most of it was bad talk about the other party. Ji Yushi felt bad staring at him, but he also didn’t know if he should greet him back.

Fortunately, before Ji Yushi could feel awkward, Duan Wen stepped forward, his figure blocking Lin Xinlan from his field of view.

Duan Wen’s eyes welled up, “Advisor Ji, do you know how much of a hard time we’ve had looking for you just because we caught a glimpse of your back view?”

Ji Yushi, “What back view?”

Duan Wen explained, “I actually didn’t see it with my own eyes so I’m not sure about the specifics. It’s just that in one of the rooms, just as we were going from one room to another, Cap Song said he saw you leave from that room. He called out but you didn’t look back. When we chased after you, you were gone.”

Ji Yushi expressed his doubts, “I haven’t heard anyone calling for me.”

“My guess was that you must not have heard.” Duan Wen sighed, “With your good memory, even if you didn’t recognise other people’s voices, you will definitely recognise Cap Song’s. I suspected that Cap Song may have been mistaken. Why wouldn’t you have responded otherwise?”

No wonder Song Qinglan asked ‘Where have you been’. Could they have been looking for him all this time?

Ji Yushi explained, “Ever since coming to this place, I have only gone through a total of five rooms, and that’s including the one we are in now.”

Duan Wen was surprised, “Only five rooms?”

It had been so long, but Ji Yushi only went to five rooms?

Everyone was shocked.

Song Qinglan asked, “Is it like that crevice and there is a problem with the flow of time here as well? To us, a week had passed, but for you it had only been an hour?”

“Not exactly.” Ji Yushi said to him, “I didn’t spend much time in the first few rooms and I had also spent three or four hours waiting for you guys together with Li Chun and Tang Qi.”

Duan Wen, “You met Chun’er and Tang Qi?!”

Ji Yushi nodded, “Yes, we arrived here together. After separating from them, I ran into other Guardians. One died as we made our way through and because the reason for it was unknown, we were trapped in that room for a while. About five hours later, the other Guardian chose to leave. I didn’t dare take the risk, so I stayed in that room for more than ten hours before arriving here.”

Hearing that Ji Yushi had separated from Li Chun and them, and then hearing about the other Guardian dying, Song Qinglan’s brows furrowed even further.

Ji Yushi thought he was going to raise an important point he had observed but he instead heard him ask, “After everyone left, you stayed in that room alone for more than ten hours?”

Ji Yushi didn’t understand why Song Qinglan asked that question again, “Yes.”

Song Qinglan, “Next to a corpse, you didn’t feel uncomfortable?”

Ji Yushi, “No. If I didn’t reach a breakthrough point, I would’ve stayed there even longer.”

Song Qinglan didn’t ask further.

Ji Yushi belatedly realised something. Was Song Qinglan worried about his hyperthymesia?

As the captain, Song Qinglan always cared about his teammates.

But perhaps it was because of the presence of others, despite the fact that everyone was standing in the same room, Ji Yushi felt that the concern that was shown towards him was a little too obvious.

The three of them had been together for more than a week. He who suddenly appeared was more like an intruder.

“I’ve noticed that some of the rooms have a time difference.” Ji Yushi tried to focus on the key points, “The other Guardians and I went through rooms of the same colour thinking that it was safe but after that incident happened, I realised that this theory wasn’t absolute. These rooms have different time differences. It may be because of this time difference that our perception of time is different. In these rooms with time differences, if you make the wrong move, you will die on the spot. Relying on whether or not the colours are the same is too risky.”

He recounted Morita Yu’s distressing death and then asked, “Have you encountered something like this on your end?”

“No.”

Someone spoke up. It was Lin Xinlan.

Song Qinglan and Duan Wen turned back at the same time. They saw that Lin Xinlan who was sitting with his back against the wall had naturally joined their conversation.

Duan Wen’s forehead twitched.

“I’ve already told Cap Song and Old Duan. I have also met another traverser here, but the situation was different from what Advisor Ji described just now. After that traverser entered a room with a different colour, his entire body disintegrated and turned into dust….”

He spoke slowly, giving off a laidback vibe, “Let me introduce myself. My name is Lin Xinlan, captain of the Tianqiong ninth Guardian squad. Ji Yushi, I have heard of your name.”

As someone with numerous rumours circulating around, it was hard for one not to have heard about Ji Yushi.

“Hello.”

Ji Yushi just nodded at him. He didn’t show any surprise and tried to stay as calm as possible.

After carrying out the social etiquette of exchanging greetings, Ji Yushi felt more comfortable to ask, “Captain Lin, when you encountered that situation, it was from what colour to what colour?”

Before Lin Xinlan could speak, Song Qinglan answered first. He spoke coldly, “Green to purple.”

Despite having his answer stolen, Lin Xinlan wasn’t angry. The expression on his face didn’t change.

He seemed to have a good temper and also a high tolerance.

Ji Yushi asked, “What colours have you encountered until now?”

Song Qinglan, “Yellow, blue, purple, green and red.”

It was the same as what he had seen. Were there only five colours?

Ji Yushi thought for a moment before asking, “Which colour appeared the most?”

This was a question Duan Wen could answer, “Green and blue the most. We only recently started to see red.”

Ji Yushi turned on his communicator and drew a cube in the air. He then chose a red pen, “The traversers and I ran into red rooms the most at first and then green and blue slowly appeared before we met here. This shows that we are near a point of intersection, and we just happen to have advanced to the same point.”

Ji Yushi first coloured one side of the cube red. He then coloured the two adjacent sides blue and green.

Everyone quietly watched him analyse the situation. Different colours were projected onto his face.

This was the Ji Yushi everyone was familiar with.

Ji Yushi’s thought process was very clear. As he coloured it, he said, “It is known that going from red to yellow will lead to death and going from green to purple will also lead to death. Assuming that the side opposite red is yellow and the side opposite green is purple, this should be how the layout is now.”

The cube in the holographic projection had been coloured.

Apart from the side opposite blue whose colour was still unknown, the layout was clear.

“My guess is, just like the Rubik’s Cube in reality, it is impossible to go between colours on opposite sides.” Ji Yushi explained, “From one adjacent colour to the other adjacent colour is safe. If we want to move around safely here, we will need to avoid going to rooms with colours on the opposing side of the cube.”

Duan Wen was shocked, “How do we choose?”

Song Qinglan mused, “So you’re saying that we need to exclude rooms with the same colour but with a time difference as well as rooms with opposite colours?”

Ji Yushi was glad there was someone who understood him immediately, “Yes.”

The three of them didn’t speak.

Ji Yushi gave them time to digest this information.

In the silence, Lin Xinlan once again spoke up, “Then having gone through rooms of the same colour this entire time and not encountering the time difference mentioned by Advisor Ji and even coming out unscathed, we must have been really lucky.”

Everyone could tell that this was a kind of euphemistic questioning.

For those who didn’t understand Ji Yushi, Ji Yushi hadn’t been here for long and had also spent more than ten hours in one room. For him to boldly make such a conclusion, it did indeed seem unreasonable.

Lin Xinlan, “Let me ask, how can we complete the so-called ‘joining’ while avoiding those two possibilities?”

Ji Yushi, “Firstly, by figuring out the rules behind the movement of the rooms.”

Lin Xinlan, “How to figure out?”

Ji Yushi, “Whenever someone leaves the room, the room will move. It’s very simple. Before leaving the room, we remember the colours of the surrounding rooms and under the premise that it is safe, we test them out one by one to see what direction the colours change.”

Lin Xinlan, “And then?”

The two asked and answered back and forth. Somehow, there seemed to be some tension in the air.

Duan Wen was confused.

What was going on here?

Song Qinglan had already walked over. He stood in front of Ji Yushi, blocking him completely.

Song Qinglan habitually crossed his arms. His handsome face looked a lot more mature with the stubble, but he still looked unkept and distant.

He spoke coldly, “And then it would be cleared. Cap Lin, our Advisor Ji telling you how to go through this cube safely is already more than enough. You should use your own brain to figure out how to clear the mission. Don’t forget, we are opponents in this mission. Don’t think about trying to get the answer out from him.”

Lin Xinlan smiled, “Oh no, you saw through me.”

Song Qinglan, “If you have doubts about the analysis just now, you don’t have to come with us.”

Lin Xinlan, “Forget it. I’ll trust him and follow you guys.”

Song Qinglan was noncommittal. He didn’t want to talk to him anymore.

He turned around and saw Ji Yushi take something out of his pocket and carve something onto the ground.

Ji Yushi was using the zipper handle he had taken from his clothes. The mark he left was strange. It wasn’t a number nor a letter.

When he got back up while patting his hands, Duan Wen and Song Qinglan recognised it.

Song Qinglan had a small urge to laugh.

Little classmate Ji held grudges. Having almost been tricked into giving out the answer, he didn’t want to disclose anything else to Lin Xinlan.

What he had written on the ground was Big Beard’s language, something that no one else would understand.

“Let’s go.” Ji Yushi’s expression was the same, “Let’s check the colours of the surrounding rooms first.”

They chose to advance into a green room. It was on their left.

Duan Wen climbed up first. He waited at the entrance to prevent the door to the room from closing and causing them to separate again.

Everyone climbed up the stairs one by one.

“Song Qinglan.” Lin Xinlan suddenly shouted out.

Ji Yushi looked back and saw Lin Xinlan sitting on the ground with his hand stretched out, “Lend me a hand. My legs are numb.”

Ji Yushi, “……..”

He simply continued climbing.

Behind him, Song Qinglan spoke heartlessly, “Get up by yourself.”

Lin Xinlan could only sigh regretfully, “Haa, we’re friends though. How did I offend you?”

The ambiguous atmosphere was strong.

Ji Yushi remembered what Li Chun had said about Lin Xinlan. His words didn’t seem too exaggerated.

He reached the new room and continued to mark the ground with his zipper handle. He turned a blind eye to the things happening behind him.

A pair of black boots appeared in front of him.

Song Qinglan squatted down beside him. He coughed dryly and then whispered to him, “That uh, that Lin Xinlan came from a year ago.”

A year ago.

Ji Yushi’s hand stopped. He didn’t raise his head, “From the time he confessed to you which resulted in you developing PTSD?”

PTSD?

Who gave that mess a name like that?

The timing and occasion wasn’t right. Song Qinglan didn’t know how to explain the matter, “………”

Ji Yushi finally looked up.

He looked at the unshaven Song Qinglan. His eyes were very calm, “Don’t change the past, don’t talk about the present. Don’t worry, I won’t tell Cap Lin about this.”