What is it like to be stared at by hundreds of people without blinking?

—It was as terrifying as the first encounter with a horde of zombies.

If they didn’t move, neither did the others.

The sun blazed overhead, and the temperature was scorching.

They stood on the elevated track, a hundred meters above the lake. A section of the guardrail, broken by the maglev train, jutted out precariously. The barely perceptible breeze stirred their clothing and hair, making it feel as if even a slight gust could send them plummeting to their deaths.

The two stood off against hundreds, and for a moment, the world was silent.

Ji Yushi subtly shifted his foot backward.

The passengers began to move, silently advancing toward them along the track.

A hand pressed against Ji Yushi’s lower back—Song Qinglan was behind him, whispering, “Get ready, we need to run.”

Ji Yushi paused, and the passengers stopped as well.

At a distance neither too close nor too far, their eyes remained fixed on the two of them. The panic, confusion, and tears from earlier were gone, replaced by blank expressions.

Run?

Ji Yushi clenched his fist. That was right; in this situation, they had no choice but to run.

“Let’s try running in the opposite direction. If we see a maintenance walkway, we’ll get off the track.”

As if giving Ji Yushi time to prepare, Song Qinglan finished speaking and then lowered his voice to count down from three: “Run!!”

They both suddenly started running at full speed.

The handcuffs linked them together, making their run clumsy and awkward.

The sound of footsteps thundered behind them as over a hundred people rushed toward them.

The narrow elevated track couldn’t accommodate so many people at once. Amid the chaos of running and shoving, the sound of people falling into the lake echoed from behind them, like dumplings being dropped into boiling water.

“Give me your hand!!”

Song Qinglan shouted, and in one swift move, he grabbed Ji Yushi’s hand, their fingers interlocking. Without the hindrance of the handcuffs, they instantly reached the speed of a hundred-meter sprint.

The crowd surged forward, nearly catching up to them.

Ji Yushi felt as if his legs no longer belonged to him. The heat from the track, after the maglev train’s high-speed travel, scorched them, causing sweat to pour off them like they were in a furnace.

Song Qinglan’s explosive power and endurance far outstripped his own. As they sprinted, Ji Yushi was practically dragged along by an immense force, struggling to keep up with Song Qinglan’s pace. The tall figure in front of him, with broad shoulders and a strong frame, was his only source of security. It felt as if as long as Song Qinglan was there, they would be able to break through.

Their palms were sticky with sweat, and Ji Yushi could feel sweat dripping from his face and down his back.

He had never run this fast in his life.

But the people behind them showed no signs of tiring. Within just a hundred meters, several had nearly grabbed the hem of Ji Yushi’s clothes.

“Damn it!”

Even Ji Yushi couldn’t help but curse.

With no weapons, an unknown path ahead, and the inability to harm living people, they were in a completely passive situation.

The elevated track seemed endless, but human stamina was not.

In this silent chase, Song Qinglan quickly thought of another plan—they couldn’t keep running like this!

Song Qinglan suddenly stopped, and Ji Yushi nearly crashed into him. Before he could say anything, Song Qinglan grabbed him by the waist, “Get up!”

Ji Yushi immediately understood. Using his height advantage, Song Qinglan intended to climb onto the ghostly image of the maglev train!

The image floated about 1.3 meters off the ground. Without hesitation, Ji Yushi found the outline of a window in the blurred image and, with Song Qinglan’s boost, managed to grab hold of it with one hand!

The handcuffs that had saved their lives earlier were now a burden. With their left hands cuffed together, Ji Yushi could barely use both hands.

The crowd swarmed them, surrounding them tightly. Countless hands grabbed at their clothes, trying to pull them down.

Song Qinglan’s face and arms were scratched, but he gritted his teeth and held on, “Pull me up!”

Ji Yushi found a foothold, bent over, and pulled Song Qinglan up.

Their teamwork was like that of acrobats. After much struggle, they finally reached a parallel line on the train image, but countless hands grabbed at their ankles, trying to drag them down. Song Qinglan kicked a few off and finally managed to climb onto the roof of the train!

Song Qinglan lay on the edge of the roof, with the clear sky behind him.

Ji Yushi lifted his head, barely catching a glimpse of Song Qinglan’s face before his body was suddenly lifted off the ground—Song Qinglan had forcefully pulled him up!

The people below couldn’t reach them for the moment, but the two of them weren’t in much better shape. They lay on the roof, catching their breath, completely disheveled.

“Damn it, my shoes…”

Ji Yushi was also panting heavily, “Mine too…”

As absurd as it was, after what seemed like a life-and-death chase, the real loss was that both of them had lost their shoes!

What was even more unsettling was that as soon as they stopped running, the passengers below stopped as well.

Ji Yushi peered over the edge and saw them all standing there, heads tilted back, staring up at the ghostly image of the maglev train, looking like a horde of zombies waiting to strike.

In the eerie silence, the two were still drenched in sweat, and as they stood up on the ghostly train, Song Qinglan’s phone rang. He glanced at it, frowning, “Consultant Ji—”

“Boom—”

A loud explosion echoed, and everything went black as their bodies were violently pulled downward!

It felt as if they had plummeted from a great height, their bodies hitting the ground with bone-jarring force, stars dancing before their eyes.

“Ah!!!”

A woman’s scream pierced the air.

Ji Yushi sat up, shocked by the scene before him.

They were in a clean and orderly maglev train car, surrounded by passengers. Some were on their phones, others were drinking water, chatting, or napping, but now they were all staring in astonishment at the two of them who had suddenly appeared.

They had materialized in the aisle of a train car, with the familiar sound of the maglev train’s operations humming around them, everything running smoothly.

This was a train in motion.

But hadn’t the train just overturned?

What was going on?

Song Qinglan also sat up, groaning from the impact, and realized they were being watched like animals.

The phone in his hand was still ringing, the caller ID showing: Grandfather.

Song Qinglan answered the call as he stood up, “Hello?”

But there was no sound from the other side.

Ji Yushi also stood up. Their disheveled appearance made the passengers wary, and some whispered to each other, with someone suggesting they should find a train officer.

But most of them were just curious. An old man asked, “Young man, where did you come from? How did you fall from the sky?”

Ji Yushi glanced around, too busy to respond.

A tug on his clothes made him look down—a small child, about four or five years old, was staring up at him with wide eyes.

The child asked, “Big brother, why aren’t you wearing shoes?”

Ji Yushi stood in the aisle, his feet only in socks, looking rather ridiculous: “…”

Noticing the handcuffs, the child wasn’t scared. Instead, they asked again, “Are you catching bad guys?”

Ji Yushi gave the child a small smile.

In PU-31, someone had once told him what to say if he was discovered by the local inhabitants.

He replied, “Yes, big brother is a police officer.”

Just then, Song Qinglan’s call was disconnected.

Blinding sunlight suddenly flooded the area, the heat rising around them, and in an instant, they were back on the roof of the ghostly maglev train.

Even though they had already experienced the wonders of two different worlds, they found this situation utterly unbelievable—it felt as if they had crossed into another world in just a few seconds.

In the midst of their shock, Ji Yushi spoke up, “We—”

But Song Qinglan was also about to speak, “Just now—”

“You first!”

Song Qinglan held his phone in one hand, extending the other into the air.

Ji Yushi grasped it, and they stood up together.

Sweat dripped from Ji Yushi’s chin, his pale face flushed with heat, making him look on the verge of heatstroke, “Captain Song, I think the train car we just entered is the same one beneath our feet now.”

Song Qinglan listened intently.

Ji Yushi continued, “From the ghostly image of this maglev train, the reality overlapping with ours is frozen in time, while our time is moving forward. For some reason, the two realities intersected, allowing us to see them.”

This reason was likely caused by the actions of Duan Wen and the others.

Every member of Sky Vault’s Seventh Team had experienced different changes in this reality. Except for Ji Yushi’s hyperthymesia, no one else could remember their alternate reality before seeing Minister Wang’s photo. In other words, for each member of the Seventh Team, Minister Wang was their common variable, the key to realizing that reality had been altered.

This change was triggered by Minister Wang’s change in position, and the root cause was the return of Sky Vault’s Twelfth Team, led by Qi.

Ji Yushi’s thoughts had never been clearer.

“The grandfather paradox says that a person cannot travel back in time to kill their grandfather. Even if they did, it would only create a parallel timeline where neither the grandfather nor the person exists—a so-called parallel world. When we saved Sky Vault’s Twelfth Team in the time rift, we created a parallel world. But this parallel world is different from what is typically understood—because we didn’t travel back in time, nor did we alter the past.”

Ji Yushi’s tone was unusually excited, “Like you mentioned earlier, if the disappearance of Team Qi at the ‘a’ point led to our rescue mission at the ‘b’ point, we closed the time rift and brought Team Qi back to the ‘a’ point, creating a new timeline that we can call the ‘c’ point. After fifteen years of Team Qi’s rule, the ‘c’ point has now reached the ‘b’ point, where we rescued them…”

Song Qinglan’s mind suddenly cleared, “If there are two parallel timelines, then at point ‘b,’ there should be two versions of us carrying out the mission to save Sky Vault’s Twelfth Team. But in reality, there’s only one version of us at point ‘b.’”

Ji Yushi’s eyes sparkled, “Exactly! At first, I thought we were in a parallel world caused by the butterfly effect, but I couldn’t convince myself because there isn’t another me or another you here. Now I understand—because we are the only ones in both realities, we ended up with overlapping memories!”

Song Qinglan had a new question, “But what is ‘c’ point? Why is it overlapping with our reality?”

Ji Yushi didn’t immediately answer this question but instead told Song Qinglan, “Captain Song, when we fell into the other reality’s train car earlier, I noticed the time on the electronic display inside the train.”

The time had been too brief for Ji Yushi to pay attention to it.

But thanks to his hyperthymesia, he could recall every detail he had seen, even long after the event.

“10:00:03, which was three seconds after we completed the ‘a’ level mission. At that time, we should have been in the middle of a temporal jump,” Ji Yushi said. “But in our current reality, a month has passed. How can two different times overlap?”

Song Qinglan thought of a possibility.

“It’s a bubble world,” Ji Yushi said. “Just like a temporal paradox on a timeline, this is actually a bubble world. It starts at ‘a’ point and ends at ‘b’ point, forming a large timeline that creates an extra, unintended bubble on the timeline.”

Below the train car, the hundred or so passengers continued to stand, heads tilted up, watching them.

In the sunlight, all that could be seen were rows of blank, expressionless faces.

A bubble world.

Qi’s team’s leadership, the overlapping memories… it all seemed to make sense now.

Ji Yushi said, “Our ‘observation’ and awakening are like puncturing this bubble. Like in the Ouroboros mission, if we leave this reality, it will stop at the point we left. To maintain its coherence and continue to exist, this world will inevitably try to stop us and keep the bubble intact.”

There were still many questions that needed answers, but both of them needed time to process this revelation.

After a brief silence, Song Qinglan shared what he had originally intended to say, “I think I know why we entered another reality earlier.”

“My grandfather’s health isn’t great, so I rarely tell him the exact time when I’m going on a mission,” Song Qinglan said. “But when I returned this time, he mentioned that he had called me the morning I left for the mission. He said the call connected, but I didn’t speak. During Guardian missions, personal items like phones have to be turned off and handed in, so I couldn’t have answered the call. I thought he was just mistaken.”

“Turns out he wasn’t. Consultant Ji, I think it was that call from another reality, from a month ago, that pulled us into our original reality.”