A Sleepless Night.

The sound of waves faintly drifted in from outside the window, accompanied by a moist breeze, making it difficult for Ji Yushi to fall asleep. On the eve of a mission, his thoughts were chaotic and aimless, unable to control the scenes that flashed through his mind. This state was detrimental to the mission; he needed to maintain a good condition.

Ji Yushi got out of bed and took some medicine, though he wasn’t sure if the medicine in this illusionary world would have any effect on him. Nonetheless, he felt more awake.

Alone, it was hard to shift his attention.

So, he took out his black-and-white handheld game console. Without turning on the light, he played for several hours by the dim light outside the window until he gradually fell asleep at dawn.

His dreams were repetitive, filled with illogical images of everything he had ever seen.

When Ji Yushi opened his eyes, he found himself back in the capsule pod.

This time, he was no longer surprised by the violent shaking of the capsule and the bizarre time-space images on the transparent panel.

When the familiar “Warning! Warning! You have deviated from the target coordinates! You have deviated from the target left side!” sounded, he even felt much less dizzy, quietly waiting for the turbulence to pass.

【Illegal jump detected!】

【Illegal jump detected!】

A few seconds later, the capsule pod quieted down, indicating that he had jumped to a new destination.

The Sky Vault system didn’t even bother with appearances anymore, discarding all pretense.

Ji Yushi unlocked the safety harness, accepting the nutrient liquid handed over by the mechanical arm as he observed the transparent panel in front of him.

The panel displayed a series of garbled text, replaced by the Sky Vault System’s mission prompts.

[Mission Mode: Cube.]

[Mission Rules: Death Elimination.]

[Mission Objective: Assembly.]

These messages were enough after just one glance.

Ji Yushi closed the panel, opened the pod door, and stepped out.

The light was blinding, and Ji Yushi used the back of his hand to shield his eyes.

Once he adjusted to the brightness, he realized the source—it was pure white all around, like being in a snowfield without any reference points, making it hard to focus.

Not far from Ji Yushi floated a red ball, about the size of a baseball. Its presence was the only thing that allowed him to barely distinguish that this was a square room.

The ceiling, walls, and floor were all pure white.

Due to some principle, the red ball floated in the center of the room.

Ji Yushi turned to look in the direction he came from, but the capsule pod that should have been behind him had disappeared, replaced by another white wall.

Was this the mission destination?

At that moment, someone appeared beside him.

Like a holographic projection loading, first came black boots from behind the white wall, then black combat gear, then a face.

Li Chun stepped forward with his left foot and landed, seemingly just coming out of his capsule pod.

He asked, “Consultant Ji! Where are we?”

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

No sooner had he spoken than their round-faced teammate appeared, also stunned by the scene before him, quickly turning to look behind.

Li Chun also glanced back, horrified, “Damn, where’s the capsule pod?!”

Their capsule pods, like Ji Yushi’s, had disappeared, or rather, the moment they opened their capsule pods, they had stepped into this place. It was just like in the Chaos mission when they opened the bearded man’s space pod door and stepped into a mirror city.

“This is like stepping into a new world with each step; it might be another rift or something, otherwise why would they ask us to assemble,” Li Chun looked around the room, “Death elimination? There’s nothing here, how do we get eliminated?”

The room was quiet for a moment. Li Chun smiled, “Lele, don’t be scared! There won’t be any two-tailed dogs this time!”

Ji Yushi had already walked around the room, observing for clues, and corrected Li Chun without looking up, “It’s Tang Qi who came in.”

Li Chun: “?”

Tang Qi had had enough, retorting unfriendly, “You’ve been on the team for over a year; how many times has this happened?”

“Damn, you two look like copy-pastes when you put on the team uniform,” Li Chun defended himself, “I’m not Consultant Ji, you two look identical, I can’t always tell you apart.”

Twins hate being mistaken for each other.

Tang Qi was annoyed, but unlike Tang Le, he wasn’t the type to shout about everything; he just stayed silent.

The room seemed safe for the time being, and with three people around, no one was panicking.

The most eye-catching, and the only eye-catching thing in the room, was the red ball floating in the center.

Tang Qi walked over, intending to raise his hand to touch it, but Ji Yushi stopped him, “Don’t touch it!”

Tang Qi immediately retracted his hand, “Sorry.”

He was indeed reckless.

Li Chun asked, “Consultant Ji, could this be some sort of killing mechanism?”

“Probably not.”

Ji Yushi had already examined the ball; its surface was smooth, looking like just an ordinary ball, but to know what it really was, it had to be touched.

He continued, “The Sky Vault System wouldn’t send us into a room full of traps just to kill us. Death elimination won’t be that simple. I’m thinking, if this ball is here, it must serve some purpose.”

“What purpose?”

Li Chun was never afraid to ask questions.

Ji Yushi answered him, “There’s no way out here, we’re trapped, so it’s impossible to complete the mission. If the Sky Vault System assigned us a mission, it must have some meaning. I guess, even if it is a mechanism, it should be something that opens or connects something. But we should wait until everyone gathers before touching it.”

Tang Qi suddenly realized, “That makes sense.”

Li Chun: “Right, I almost touched it too. This way, we make sure we don’t get separated.”

Ji Yushi briefly and clearly expressed his opinion and then walked around the room again.

Based on his deliberate walking pace, each step was about 50 centimeters. It took ten steps to walk along one wall.

So, this room was 5 meters by 5 meters, covering 25 square meters.

He looked up, estimating the room’s height to be about the same as its width, making it a cube.

A cube…

Ji Yushi pondered the mission mode, wondering if this cube was part of a larger Rubik’s cube.

Everything was still unknown.

Ji Yushi raised his hand to look at his communicator; it had been over five minutes since the three of them arrived in the room, yet no one else had come in.

He was a little anxious.

After Ji Yushi finished speaking, Tang Qi had already tried connecting to the public channel, “Consultant Ji, the public channel isn’t working, I can’t reach Captain Song and the others.”

“I noticed that too; it might be a signal issue,” Ji Yushi nodded slightly, frowning, “Do you remember which wall we came from?”

What seemed like a simple question shocked both Tang Qi and Li Chun.

They hadn’t noticed, but after entering this room, they had moved around and were no longer in their original positions.

All four walls were identical, with no distinguishing features to help identify them, not even Ji Yushi could remember through recollection—they couldn’t even be sure where they had entered from.

Tang Qi: “I don’t remember, damn.”

Li Chun: “Me neither!!”

The two instinctively touched the walls, hoping to find something different, but all they felt was a smooth surface.

All four walls had no doors, no other exits.

Both were utterly confused.

What they didn’t know was that this was also the first time Ji Yushi couldn’t recall anything useful through his memory, which was why he had asked the question.

After touching every wall, Li Chun gave up entirely, feeling that this mission’s difficulty level was maxed out. He simply sat down on the floor, “Forget it, let’s wait. When Captain Song and the others arrive, we’ll know which wall we came from.”

Ji Yushi didn’t respond.

He seemed to be thinking.

“Let’s wait; they’ll come,” Li Chun added, “There’s probably a delay, just like when we got sucked into the rift and dropped onto the garbage mountain one by one, right?”

It was a possibility.

Tang Qi agreed, “You might be right, but who knows how long we’ll have to wait.”

Li Chun still remembered the pre-mission briefing, “Then we’ll wait, we can’t act rashly. If we die first, we’ll lower the team’s success rate.”

With Ji Yushi there, the two teammates weren’t overly panicked.

But in terms of action, they still needed Captain Song Qinglan. One was the brain, the other the executor; to the teammates, these two were the golden combination.

Moreover, they felt that when Song Qinglan wasn’t around, Ji Yushi seemed much cooler, not as lively as when Song Qinglan was present.

The two of them were more eager than ever for Captain Song to arrive.

An hour later.

In the empty, enclosed room, the seemingly endless waiting magnified the unease, making the three gradually more irritable.

Li Chun, who talked the most, initially chatted with them intermittently.

But one was introverted, and the other wasn’t interested in gossip. After talking for a while, Li Chun got a dry mouth and felt it was pointless, so he stopped

.

“Should we keep waiting?” Li Chun couldn’t stand it anymore, “I feel like they’re not coming.”

Ji Yushi was sitting in a corner, playing Tetris. The white walls made his eyebrows clear, and his expression was very calm. Hearing the question, he put away the game console without hesitation, “It’s possible they went somewhere else.”

Tang Qi: “There’s another place?”

Ji Yushi said, “There must be. Sky Vault System mentioned this was a multi-person mission, so there must be more than just our team here. But we haven’t encountered anyone else, which means they’re somewhere else.”

This ‘Sky Vault System in all its eras’ had set up such a mission, so there shouldn’t have been a delay in participants reaching their destinations.

After waiting for so long, it was enough to rule out the possibility that Song Qinglan and the others would arrive in the same place.

Let’s do it.

Tang Qi walked over and decided to touch the red ball.

His height allowed him to reach it easily, and as soon as he touched it, it fell into his hand.

Everyone in the room held their breath, fearing something would happen.

Fortunately, nothing happened.

It seemed like just an ordinary ball.

Ji Yushi stood up from the corner and walked toward the center of the room.

“Let me see.” Li Chun, standing beside Tang Qi, took the red ball, turning it over in his hands, “It feels loose here—damn!!”

“Beep—”

With a soft sound, a circular hole suddenly appeared in the floor, catching Tang Qi and Li Chun off guard, and they fell through in the blink of an eye.

Ji Yushi’s expression changed. He lunged towards them but didn’t manage to grab even a corner of their clothes.

“Damn!”

Ji Yushi couldn’t help but curse, waiting for a second to see what was below, only to hear another “Beep—”, and the hole closed up again.

At the same time, the red ball seemed to have a bounce, returning to its original position.

It hovered steadily in the air.

With his teammates’ lives unknown, Ji Yushi broke out in a cold sweat, immediately taking the ball back and stepping back a few paces, inspecting the loose area that Li Chun had mentioned.

The red ball indeed had hidden buttons, not just one, but six.

Ji Yushi pressed one at random, and with a “Beep—”, a circular hole two meters square appeared in the wall in front of him.

The six buttons represented the six sides of the room.

So it really was the key to the exit.

Ji Yushi tried twice more, and the hole in the floor reappeared.

“How are you guys?!”

He anxiously looked down.

As he expected, below was another room, also with white walls and floors.

But the room was empty.

Li Chun and Tang Qi, who had fallen through right in front of his eyes, had vanished into thin air.