Rubik’s Cube

Chapter 70

“Straight?” Lin Xinlan was a little surprised. He immediately commented, “That is indeed tricky. I would never touch a straight man.”

Ji Yushi, “……..”

It seems that Cap Lin has a deep misunderstanding of himself.

Lin Xinlan ended the topic of sexuality and changed it to something else, “You’re getting along pretty well with the seventh squad, especially with Cap Song. It reminds me of that time when I went out with him for missions.”

From Lin Xinlan’s end, the scout in the seventh squad should be Old Yu.

What had happened over that year for Old Yu to change to Ji Yushi and for Song Qinglan’s attitude towards him to change so drastically? Lin Xinlan was very curious, but he didn’t dwell on this issue.

“At that time, we were still in training. We cooperated very well; anything I thought of, he also thought of, and we managed to complete a lot of missions together.” Lin Xinlan said, “In the student rankings, we were always tied. Some called us the Double Lan Duo.”

Ji Yushi had heard about this from Li Chun.

As Lin Xinlan talked about this, he seemed to be really aggrieved.

“Old Song is a cold guy and more capable than me. I originally thought that I would be assigned to the same squad as him after finishing training and wanted to be his left and right hand. Who knew….Tianqiong had been established for so many years and had been gradually expanding but it was seriously short-handed. Even someone like me became a rookie squad leader and like this, the Double Lan Duo was separated.” Lin Xinlan’s focus wasn’t this. He quickly went straight to the point, “Advisor Ji, say, why do you think we were still forced into this mission despite how powerful Tianqiong has become?”

Ji Yushi shook his head, “I don’t know.”

That was the truth.

That cunning so-called ‘Tianqiong of all eras’ had said that their squad was the squad with the highest chance of succeeding so it needed their assistance with completing the mission. But why was something like this assigned by a system with self-awareness and what went wrong in the middle? That all still needed to be verified.

Lin Xinlan told him, “There is a conspiracy theory that there are holes in time and space because Tianqiong had interfered with the natural state of time and space. Not long ago, an anti-time management alliance was established on the dark web. Many people think that our work is meaningless because time is continuous; even if Tianqiong fixes a loophole, another loophole would inevitably replace it.”

Ji Yushi remembered the protest he saw in the bubble world.

“Tianqiong destroys the world!!”

“Illegal transition!!”

“Stop interfering with time and space!! Shut down the Tianqiong system!!”

“Down with the Time Management Alliance!”

A large-scale protest like that would appear in the bubble world because it was based on the original world. Sooner or later, the situation Lin Xinlan mentioned would be exactly the same as what he saw in the bubble world.

“Our current situation…..” Lin Xinlan reached this point and looked around the room, “Might be explaining this.”

Ji Yushi didn’t speak.

Lin Xinlan turned around and finished his words, “Perhaps time travel shouldn’t have been invented.”

As one whose job was to travel through time, he had even dared to say such words denying his occupation. Lin Xinlan was very bold.

Ji Yushi again didn’t speak.

It was because Ji Yushi wasn’t an ambitious Guardian who wanted to make a career out of it. He wasn’t in the position to express his opinion.

“Don’t worry. I don’t really mean it.” Lin Xinlan laughed, “Based on your reaction, it seems that I haven’t resigned yet a year later.”

Ji Yushi said, “Yes.”

Lin Xinlan put away the dice he was playing with and spoke meaningfully, “Besides….I like the feeling of chasing after Cap Song’s team in terms of points.”

Ji Yushi, “……..”

*

The two stayed in the room for a while but Song Qinglan and them didn’t arrive.

Ji Yushi checked his communicator, “Twenty minutes have passed.”

Could it really be just as Lin Xinlan said and they had separated again? He didn’t think that Song Qinglan would take such a long time.

Lin Xinlan circled around the room. He held the blue ball in his hand and wanted to check again to see if the colours of the surrounding rooms had changed.

While Lin Xinlan was checking the rooms, there was a ‘beep—-” and a circular hole opened on the wall at the back.

One cannot avoid one’s enemy. The person who appeared was the man who had laughed at them earlier when they were in the super slow room.

It was the dark-skinned traverser. The moment the two parties saw each other, they were both stunned. The other party exclaimed, “You’re out?! How come you’re missing two people?”

Ji Yushi remained expressionless.

The other party then said, “Hey! Help us check. Are there any marks in the room you’re in?”

Ji Yushi replied in French, “What number?”

Other party, “32!”

Ji Yushi, “No.”

The other party clapped his hands in annoyance and said to his teammate below, “These traversers said there are no marks, but we’ve been going around in circles! Why?!”

“Beep—-”

This group seemed to be very casual and impolite. They actually closed the hole immediately afterwards and disappeared again.

Lin Xinlan didn’t understand what they were saying so he asked Ji Yushi.

Ji Yushi briefly explained to Lin Xinlan, “They’re going around in a circle.”

Lin Xinlan remembered the ’29’ Ji Yushi wrote and couldn’t help but laugh. Immediately afterwards, a round hole opened above them.

“Beep—-”

The two immediately looked up.

The people who appeared above wasn’t Song Qinglan and Duan Wen, but new, unfamiliar faces.

A red-haired female traverser leaned against the entrance of the hole and looked down. She said in English, “Safe!”

Lin Xinlan and Ji Yushi took a few steps back.

That red-haired woman and four other teammates climbed down from the upper room.

These people seem to have only just arrived and each of them had excited expressions like they were clearing a dungeon. The red-haired woman even greeted Ji Yushi and Lin Xinlan in the room, “Hi.”

In the twenty or so square metre room, an additional five people had appeared. With seven traversers in the same place, it suddenly felt a lot more crowded.

A traverser asked Lin Xinlan, “Mind if I use the key?”

Lin Xinlan, “Key?”

The five of them looked at the blue ball in Lin Xinlan’s hand.

They wanted to check the surrounding rooms and leave through a suitable one — They were just passing by.

Lin Xinlan readily agreed and gave them the ball. Along the way, he asked, “Excuse me, have you met our teammates on the way here?”

Ji Yushi and Lin Xinlan both wore black combat uniforms that belonged to their era. Although the squad number on their chest was different, one could still tell in one glance that they were from the same place.

These people denied it and proceeded to choose a new room.

“Goodbye, friends from a different era!”

“Perhaps we can meet again somewhere in time and space!”

With optimistic parting words, this group of traversers left.

They seem to have come from a very happy and well-off era.

Having met two groups of traversers, Ji Yushi said, “Cap Lin, let’s go.”

Lin Xinlan, “Not waiting for them?”

“Not waiting.” Ji Yushi reluctantly accepted the fact that even if he understood the rules, he couldn’t continue waiting for his teammates. As more and more people understood the rules, more and more people would try moving from room to room. “Have you noticed that there are now more people nearby?”

Lin Xinlan said, “Yes, it is a bit strange. Are they all going towards the centre block?”

Ji Yushi continued, “Even if we don’t move in this situation, we would be forced to move with the others moving around. As a result, we should do as discussed earlier and perhaps we can find each other again….”

It was time to set off.

Ji Yushi’s tone didn’t sound disappointed. In a short amount of time, he had made a second decision.

Lin Xinlan admired his ability to remain calm.

The centre block was a mystery.

Why weren’t the rooms here like what they had imagined where it would have two colours at the same time if it happened to be where the two adjacent sides joined?

Could the centre be empty, or did it have something else?

As they advanced ahead while still clueless, reaching the centre block had become the driving force for them.

They went through another two rooms. Ji Yushi walked ahead constantly leaving marks behind.

Yellow, blue, purple, red, green and green. Those five colours had gathered in one place again. It made them gradually become more and more irritable.

When they reached a new room, Ji Yushi stopped just as he was about to make a mark. “…..How can this be?”

Lin Xinlan came over, “What did you find?”

When Lin Xinlan saw what Ji Yushi saw, his tone also changed, “We’ve been here before?!”

There was a symbol carved onto the ground that could only be recognised by Ji Yushi.

There were even two of them.

But Ji Yushi hadn’t made his mark yet.

Lin Xinlan asked, “Did those people notice that we had tricked them and deliberately left marks behind to mislead us?”

Apart from this, Lin Xinlan couldn’t think of anything else that could explain this phenomenon.

If they had already been to this room before, how could there be two identical marks on the floor?

“No.” Ji Yushi rubbed the mark on the floor with his hand and said, “This was done by me. I’m certain.”

Lin Xinlan, “Are you sure? Maybe they imitated your writing.”

JI Yushi said it again, his tone was confident, “I’m certain.”

This strange scene made both of them feel a chill run through them.

How could something like this be explained?

“This was the ninth and tenth room that we’ve been to.” Ji Yushi pointed at the two symbols and said, “This was the blue super slow room and this was the blue room next to it that we entered after rolling the dice.”

Lin Xinlan, “Two blues? You mean the two blue rooms have overlapped?”

“I don’t know.” Ji Yushi lowered his eyes. He spoke as he made a new mark between the two symbols.

If it was because there were more people passing through causing the room they had originally passed by to move to this place, it still couldn’t explain the overlap.

*

After entering a new room again, Lin Xinlan’s voice disappeared from behind him.

Ji Yushi looked back. He saw Lin Xinlan maintaining a bending posture at the entrance of the round hole. His entire body was motionless and seemed to be at a standstill.

“Cap Lin?!”

Thinking that he had entered a slow-motion room again, Ji Yushi subconsciously called out. He then reacted —- Time difference!

Although the colours of the balls were different, the time in this room was not in line with the time in the room from which he had come from. Just like how Song Qinglan felt like a week had passed before he found Ji Yushi, the time difference caused the people in the two rooms to be separated.

“Beep——”

The round hole in the room closed.

There was only Ji Yushi in the room now.

Ji Yushi retrieved the purple ball suspended in the air and checked. Sure enough, Lin Xinlan wasn’t there anymore.

Lin Xinlan’s room had moved.

Ji Yushi was silent.

All of this was far beyond his expectations. Everything was completely out of his control.

Ji Yushi alone checked the colours of the surrounding rooms. When he reached the room in front, he was stunned.

A new room had appeared before him.

It had never appeared anywhere else before.

Pure white walls and blinding lights.

Unlike what they had imagined, this place wasn’t empty nor was it colourful.

There was a black ball quietly floating in the centre of the room.

Ji Yushi had reached the centre block.

He took out his zipper handle and tossed it in.

There was a crisp sound. The small zipper handle was difficult to follow but Ji Yushi had excellent eyesight and good concentration, so he was able to accurately follow its trajectory. It fell into the centre of the room completely intact.

Ji Yushi stepped onto the ladder and climbed up.

There was a voice inside him telling him not to go in.

That was his sense of reason as well as his cowardly side.

If he was wrong, he would completely fail the mission. He would face death and elimination and be unable to continue.

If he died in the centre block, his teammates would lose his assistance and would perhaps also lose traces of him. Would Song Qinglan continue to look for him?

But Ji Yushi still went through the hole.

He turned around and stepped onto the first step on the ladder inside.

*

“Beep——”

The moment he stepped into the centre block, the purple ball in his hand returned to its original position and the round hole on the wall closed.

Ji Yushi’s vision suddenly darkened. The surroundings were also extremely quiet. He didn’t know where he was.

No light, no sound. Everything was dead silent.

Ji Yushi couldn’t even hear himself breathing.

Am I dead?

—- As soon as he wondered this, a ray of light appeared within the darkness.

Suddenly, the entire place brightened up.

Ji Yushi felt like he was in the middle of a vast universe. The sky stretched endlessly in the distance, as did the ground. He on the other hand was standing in the middle of a bright galaxy.

He saw it now. Those lights were actually countless different coloured cubes.

They glowed six different colours. It was like there were six rays of lights crisscrossing each other.

A distant memory surfaced in Ji Yushi’s mind.

In the Tianqiong training camp, the instructor on the stage gave a simple demonstration.

She drew a flowing ray of light in the air, “Our research team invented Tianqiong. They were the ones who discovered that time wasn’t just a straight line.”

Then, countless thin lines stretched out from it.

That scene gradually merged with the scene before him.

Ji Yushi walked through these lights. With every step he took, his surroundings would flip. Up, down, front and back, it was hard to distinguish which direction was which.

These lights seem to cut off. Red embedded into blue, yellow embedded into purple…..Countless cubes of different colours were the sources of those lights. They sat along the interlacing light rays interrupting the continuity of these rays.

Ji Yushi stopped in place.

The cubes flickered. Round holes constantly appeared on different sides of it.

He saw traversers of different skin colours and from different eras walking through them.

He saw someone dying, someone break down, someone circle the cube again and again and someone leave their capsule and enter a new room.

He saw the cubes move, constantly changing the way it was made up.

Just like the picture he saw in the book “Time Traveller” he read as a child; he saw countless different worlds through the wormholes.

As the traversers crossed through the cubes, some colours increased in the light rays while other colours gradually decreased. It continuously changed in a way Ji Yushi had never seen before. The traversers walked through these fragments of time and space, attempting to join them as Tianqiong had advised.

Mission mode: Rubik’s Cube.

Mission objective: Joining.

Someone had said to him, “Could it be like ‘Chaos’? The so-called mission should only be taken literally and doesn’t really have any special meaning to it. As you know, it is an artificial intelligence. It’s not that clever.”

Someone had said to him, “Take it apart if you can’t restore it?”

He suddenly understood something.

There was a weight on his shoulder. Someone behind him called out his name, “Ji Yushi.”

Ji Yushi was startled. After turning around, the first thing that caught his eye was a stubble. Raising his head slightly, his eyes met with a pair of calm eyes.

Behind Song Qinglan was Duan Wen and also a Zhou Mingxuan who was covered in blood. The three of them had also arrived at the centre block.

The sight before them made them unable to speak. They didn’t say anything and just looked around at their surroundings.

The lights were reflected in Ji Yushi’s eyes. Song Qinglan seemed to have quickly lost interest in the brilliant surroundings and just subconsciously stood beside Ji Yushi. He similarly looked up into the distance.

“It’s pretty.” Song Qingly spoke lazily, “How does it compare to the crevice of time and space in Chaos?”

“Not the same.”

Ji Yushi replied.

In the crevice of time and space in Chaos, he once stood under an aurora and had his breath taken away by the appearance of a large silver-white planet passing by a mountain of metal garbage. The sea in the sky, getting wet from the water splashed by a whale, the sideways snow-capped mountains as well as the heavy rain.

Just like that time, the same person stood beside him.

“Our job may be the only job where you can see a sight like this.” Song Qinglan said, “Premium sightseeing ticket, and it’s also limited edition.”

Ji Yushi looked over, “I know what’s going on here.”