This Mission

[Mission Mode: Chaos]

[Mission Rules: None]

[Mission Objective: Time Restorers]

After being hijacked by the “self-aware” Sky Vault system, they had already completed a mission rated as ultra-S-level, known as [Ouroboros], a task that left them mentally and physically exhausted. So, before setting off this time, Song Qinglan had chosen an A-level mission from the waiting list, hoping it would unlock more hints about when they could return. The expectation was that this mission would be much simpler compared to [Ouroboros]—after all, an A-level mission should be much easier than an ultra-S-level one. It seemed so straightforward that the system hadn’t even set any specific mission rules.

But who knew that this damned system would once again catch them completely off guard?

Ji Yushi had mostly confirmed that their being pulled into this place was not a coincidence.

Whether it was the vertically mirrored rainforest or the horizontally mirrored city, the flow of time in both was far beyond the bounds of normal understanding.

These strange phenomena directly corresponded to their mission objective: Time Restorers.

For him and Song Qinglan, they had only been outside the space capsule for about three minutes, but for Li Chun, it was a different story.

According to Li Chun, he had arrived at this place six days ago.

Like them, his capsule had fallen into the junkyard, and in a daze, he saw a bearded man with blood-stuffed nostrils.

The bearded man, after checking that he was still alive by inspecting his uniform, had slowly taken the nutrient solution from his capsule, then tied him up with a chain and dragged him, along with the scavenged supplies, back to the space capsule.

“I almost thought he was going to chop me up and cook me!” Li Chun said. “I couldn’t move at the time, but I had already composed my last will. I mean, how unlucky can you get? It’s bad enough to be hijacked by a system in the middle of a mission, completing one task after another with no extra pay! But fine, I swore when I joined Sky Vault to be a fearless Guardian. But to die in this godforsaken place? I’d be really pissed off—I was even planning to ask that girl for her number when I got back!”

Song Qinglan gave him a sidelong glance. “So all that talk was just leading up to that last point?”

Li Chun hesitated. “That’s just a side note. Honestly, I’m not that afraid of dying. I mean, we all died multiple times on PU-31, right? I’m just scared of dying here alone, without even seeing you guys one last time.”

With Li Chun’s chatter, the space capsule gained a bit of warmth and life.

The eerie atmosphere of the otherworldly setting was diluted, and even the bearded man had given up on grabbing a frying pan to challenge Song Qinglan again.

When they returned, the bearded man said a few words to them, pointed at Li Chun to indicate that he had saved him, then gulped down his beer and promptly fell asleep on the spot. The phrase that came to mind was “easygoing and carefree.”

During the three minutes that Song Qinglan and Ji Yushi were gone—equivalent to six days in the space capsule—Li Chun and the bearded man had engaged in some deep communication. The walls and floor were covered with their “collaborative works,” and the once-decent sketchbook had been completely defaced.

Ji Yushi listened to the conversation between Song Qinglan and Li Chun, then followed the “artworks” around the room with his eyes. Some he could understand, others he could not.

“Where are the others?” Song Qinglan asked.

“I don’t know.” Now that the captain was back, Li Chun didn’t dare to be too casual and answered honestly, “The communicator can’t connect here, so I don’t know where Wen-ge and the others are. Maybe they’re still on their way here.”

Like Ji Yushi, Li Chun had fallen into this place just as he was preparing to transition in the capsule, and before that, Song Qinglan had already been here for several days.

It seemed that not only did the mirrored rainforest and city have different time flows, but this entire world operated on a different time scale compared to the outside.

Ji Yushi pointed to a piece of paper on the wall and asked, “Is this a drawing of the bearded man?”

The paper depicted a space capsule with nine people beside it, one of whom was particularly tall.

The space capsule was drawn similarly to Song Qinglan’s cartoon version, but the person was so poorly drawn that it was clearly the bearded man’s handiwork.

“The bearded man?” Li Chun accepted the simple nickname and nodded. “Yes, this is how he drew himself. When they arrived, there were nine of them, but now he’s the only one left. Judging by the uniform and the space capsule, do you think they might have been time travelers like us?”

“It’s possible they were also pulled in,” Song Qinglan said.

Li Chun suddenly remembered something and walked over. “Consultant Ji, he wrote something here, but I can’t understand it. Can you?”

Li Chun found another piece of paper, where the bearded man had drawn himself in more detail, wearing a uniform with some symbols on it.

These symbol-like markings were the bearded man’s written language, which no one could decipher.

But Li Chun had asked the right person.

As soon as Ji Yushi saw the symbols, he immediately recalled the keypad in the small room. The symbols on the uniform matched those on the keypad.

Ji Yushi said, “If the symbols on the keypad represent numbers, then by mapping two of these symbols to the positions on a 1–9 keypad, they correspond to 18.”

Song Qinglan understood. “According to your analysis, using the process of elimination, those first two symbols can’t be numbers.”

“They probably aren’t,” Ji Yushi agreed, looking back at the drawing of the space capsule. “But since they appear on the uniform, even if they aren’t numbers, they must represent something like a region or project. If we can figure out what they mean, we might be able to determine where the bearded man came from.”

Ji Yushi paused. “Nine people… and now he’s the only one left?”

There were almost no traces of other people having lived in the space capsule.

The control room was filled with accumulated junk, a state that couldn’t have been reached in a short time; it must have been built up over a long period. The bearded man’s messy hair and long beard also indicated that he had been here for a very long time.

So, how long had the bearded man been living here alone?

The drag marks by the door of the small room, made by chains being used multiple times, also suggested that the bearded man had dragged more than one person back here. So where had those people gone?

Why was the bearded man the only one left in this place?

Song Qinglan pondered, “Could it be like the Sky Vault Team 12? Maybe those people entered the rainforest, the city, or some other place.”

Li Chun asked curiously, “Sky Vault Team 12? What rainforest and city?”

“I’ll explain it to you later,” Song Qinglan said, not letting himself get sidetracked. “Consultant Ji, if those people really went in, and since those two places have different time flows, it’s very possible they got lost and couldn’t come back.”

Ji Yushi’s mind was always sharp.

Even with a high-difficulty mission like [Ouroboros], he was quick to spot blind spots that others missed.

This time was no different.

“It’s simple—we can calculate it,” Ji Yushi said. “We weren’t wearing our communicators in the rainforest, so based on my perception of time, I estimate we spent about two days there.”

“Wait a minute,” Song Qinglan interrupted. “Two days?”

He felt like it was at most around one day. Besides feeling hungry and tired, he hadn’t found the rainforest particularly grueling.

“There were,” Ji Yushi replied, his gaze dropping slightly. “For certain reasons, I rarely misjudge time, so we probably spent around two days in the rainforest.”

Song Qinglan understood—it was due to Ji Yushi’s hyperthymesia.

For someone with hyperthymesia, unlike ordinary people, they don’t gradually forget what happened a second or a minute ago. For them, every second lived remains vividly imprinted in their minds, including all perceptions and experiences within that second. Recalling it is like reliving it, which is why they rarely misjudge the passage of time.

Ji Yushi didn’t dwell on Song Qinglan’s doubts and continued, “But when we returned, we discovered that from the time we left here to enter the rainforest and then came back, only about two hours had actually passed. To make comparisons easier, let’s assume it was two hours. The result is that, when calculated hourly, the time in the rainforest flows 24 times slower than in the space capsule.”

Song Qinglan and Li Chun listened quietly.

“But when we exited through the outer hatch and entered that city, it was the complete opposite,” Ji Yushi continued. “You could say that time there flows unimaginably fast. Comparing three minutes to six days, and again calculating by the hour, the time in that city flows 2,880 times faster than in the space capsule.”

Ji Yushi’s mental arithmetic was as outstanding as his memory; he didn’t even need a notepad or a calculator: “To simplify, if we hadn’t gone to the rainforest first and instead opened the outer hatch directly and entered the city, we would have tried to find a way out of there. Even if we had stayed in that city for just one day, it would have equated to about 7.89 years here in the space capsule. Imagine what would happen if we spent several days in that city and then came back.”

Hearing this, Li Chun’s mouth dropped open. “Damn! If that happened, wouldn’t I have already died of old age by the time you guys returned?”

“No, it’s us who would have died of old age,” Ji Yushi shook his head. “For you, it’s only been six days. If we take the space capsule’s time flow as the constant, then the variable exists only in the rainforest or the city.”

Song Qinglan added, “So, if we stayed there long enough, we could end up in a situation where time is flowing over two thousand times faster on our bodies, watching ourselves age and die helplessly.”

Everyone fell silent.

Just imagining that scenario was enough to send chills down their spines.

What had happened to the people who came here before them, and why they had disappeared, was now almost imaginable.

No wonder the bearded man had such a strong reaction when they decided to go out the outer hatch.

In the end, was this bearded man actually a good guy?

Although Song Qinglan and Consultant Ji had returned safely, Li Chun was still feeling a sense of lingering fear.

He asked anxiously, “So are we supposed to complete the mission here? How are we supposed to fix time? Is this really just an A-level mission?”

“If you hadn’t gotten him drunk, maybe we could have continued communicating,” Song Qinglan said, crossing his arms. “And what’s weird is, how come he’s getting along with you so well?”

Song Qinglan had been locked up and starved for five or six days.

“This is a problem with no solution,” Ji Yushi said. “As for how to fix it… I don’t know yet.”

He looked around at the drawings and symbols covering the walls and floor. “I’ll start by understanding what you’ve communicated with the bearded man over the past few days. Once he wakes up, I might be able to learn his language.”

Song Qinglan asked, “You can learn his language?”

Ji Yushi replied, “Yes, I’m familiar with but not fluent in seven languages, and I can learn new ones pretty quickly. I can give it a try.”

The other two fell silent for a moment.

Ji Yushi looked back at them curiously. “What’s wrong?”

Li Chun asked sincerely, “Consultant Ji, do you know the difference between a regular player and a player with cheats?”

The three of them then split up.

Song Qinglan headed back to the junkyard to search for any useful clues among the parts and machinery and to observe how far the surrounding void and darkness extended from the space capsule.

Since the drawings were too difficult to decipher, Li Chun stayed behind to help Ji Yushi make sense of what he already knew.

When the bearded man woke up, they would try to get more information from him.

“Is this a drawing of us?” Ji Yushi asked, holding up a sheet of paper covered in scribbles.

The paper depicted two figures, one tall and one slim, both holding cans, with the number “7” written on their chests.

Li Chun nodded eagerly. “Yes! He drew that after we talked. It’s how I figured out you two were here.”

Ji Yushi smiled, realizing the bearded man must have felt quite resentful about them eating his canned food.

But then he frowned, pointing at something on the drawing. “And what’s this?”

Between the figures of him and Song Qinglan, the bearded man had drawn a heart.

“Whoa!” Li Chun quickly crumpled up the paper and tossed it aside. “The bearded man misunderstood and thought you two were a couple!”

Ji Yushi: “…”

From the bearded man’s perspective, the way he and Song Qinglan had been acting these past couple of days might have seemed a bit unusual.

In retrospect, some of their behavior did seem a bit, well, suggestive.

“Good thing Captain Song isn’t here! Consultant Ji, you don’t know, but Captain Song has PTSD about this kind of thing!” Li Chun, his gossip and chatterbox tendencies in full swing, continued, “If he saw this, I’d never be able to explain it, even if I jumped into the Yellow River.”

Ji Yushi blinked and then sat down, asking, “Oh? What kind of PTSD?”