In front of Zoe, she took out a dagger and prepared to mark the ground. However, there was already a mark on the floor. The three newcomers could not see Ji Yushi or the existing mark on the floor. Ji Yushi stood behind Zoe, watching her as she used the dagger to etch over the existing Roman numeral “11.” Then, Zoe stood up, took the floating red sphere as before, and pressed the switch.

They began to observe the colors of the spheres in the surrounding rooms. Morita Yuu checked two rooms and climbed up the ladder to the room on the left, saying, “Red!” Ji Yushi remained in place, watching as the “other self” approached, passed through his body, and climbed the ladder on the right side.

The “other self” was like a ghost that should not be there, undetectable. Ji Yushi saw the “other self” climb to the top of the ladder and say, “Red… wait a moment.” They discovered the head in the right-side room and then chose the left-side room. The dialogue and actions of the three followed the previous scenario, with Morita Yuu dying in the left-side room.

Ji Yushi observed their confusion, Zoe’s disbelief and pale trembling, and watched as the “other self” took the medicine and repeated the gum experiment. They were trapped in the room.

Ji Yushi watched the repetition as an outsider. He saw the “other self” sit in the corner, start playing the game console, and wait for a new chance, while Zoe paced around the room, eventually sitting and staring blankly.

What was happening?

After so many bizarre and incredible experiences, Ji Yushi remained calm. The room seemed to have its time frozen at the moment Zoe left, then repeated the process. What would happen to the red-sphere rooms on the left and right?

Ji Yushi removed the floating sphere from the air. After taking it, the original spot still floated with a sphere from a few hours ago. He tried to touch it, but just as the “other self” could pass through his body, his hand passed through the sphere as well. This indicated that they were not co-existing simultaneously but were more like a replay of a scene.

Ji Yushi climbed the ladder on the left side. He opened the circular hole leading to the left-side room and found that the room where Morita Yuu’s body lay was still there, as was the room with Morita Yuu’s head on the right. However, the room with the yellow sphere on top was gone, replaced by a room with a floating green sphere.

Ji Yushi checked all six directions. The original sequence of yellow, green, red, red, blue, blue had changed to blue, blue, red, red, green, blue, meaning all rooms except the red ones on the sides had turned into blue and green.

This change was due to Zoe leaving the room. Whenever someone moved from one room to another and closed the door, the original room would move. Thus, the rooms surrounding Ji Yushi had changed. He realized that apart from the unchanged red rooms on the sides, the other four directions had all transformed.

Ji Yushi remained still, his mind racing, quickly analyzing and mapping out the situation. It appeared that if he treated the left, current, and right directions as a line, the situation resembled this line moving one step either left or right.

Indeed, as he had previously mentioned to Morita Yuu and Zoe, every move in the cube was not just the movement of a single room but involved the linked rooms in a row or column.

What was the pattern of this movement?

Ji Yushi didn’t understand for now, but this pattern gave him a clue. The so-called “splicing” of the cube might refer to connecting these rooms through movement. Understanding the movement pattern of each row and column might make it easier to splice rooms of the same color.

However, rooms of the same color have a time difference. Moving into rooms of the same color but with different time differences could result in similar outcomes as Morita Yuu. Therefore, might they need to arrange these rooms of the same color in a specific order?

A new question arose: how to determine each room’s time difference while ensuring safety?

Ji Yushi had no answer but needed to continue thinking. He had plenty of patience, having once spent two days writing the Fibonacci sequence from the ceiling to the floor as a child, drawing diagrams, writing formulas, and listing possibilities.

The new batch of them completed the gum experiment. The “other self” asked Zoe, “Morita said the ball in Chuck’s death room was yellow?” Zoe confirmed, “Yes, what did you think of?”

Hearing this, Ji Yushi stopped writing on the holographic projection and looked at the cube he had drawn. The room where Chuck died was yellow. Before Zoe left, the room above was yellow, but now it had turned blue. Ji Yushi remembered that the number of yellow rooms had been decreasing with their movement, and now there were none around him.

In the six faces of the cube, he had seen five colors: red, green, blue, purple, yellow, and one unknown color. The changing colors and movement patterns pointed to a key insight: he was approaching a point where blue, red, and green intersected while moving away from yellow.

Ji Yushi marked these colors on the cube. He discovered that yellow and the unknown color must be adjacent to one of the red faces. Since entering a yellow room resulted in death, did this imply that yellow and red faces were not adjacent, making traversal between these colors deadly?

Zoe chose the green room and survived. Ji Yushi stood up and retrieved the sphere. He now had two choices: blue or green. Even if he waited, these colors would not change. He had to make a choice.

Blue and green were adjacent to red. Ji Yushi opened the blue room’s door, climbed the ladder, and reached the circular hole. He glanced back and saw the “other self” return to the corner, playing the game, while Zoe walked around the room.

They would repeat endlessly in this room with fixed time.

Ji Yushi climbed through the hole, and the red sphere in his hand was pulled away by a strange force, bouncing back heavily and landing far away. Then, with a “beep——” the door closed behind him, and he safely reached the room with the blue sphere.

As he was about to take down the blue sphere to check the surrounding rooms’ colors, Ji Yushi heard another “beep——” from behind.

Someone jumped down the ladder. Ji Yushi barely had time to see who it was before being forcefully pushed back, slamming against the wall.

The familiar presence hit him with disbelief. The deep, stern voice said, “Ji Yushi!”

He looked up.

It had been a while, and in front of him, Song Qinglan, with a scruffy beard, showed signs of weariness.

Song Qinglan looked down at him, his black eyes carrying an unclear emotion, almost menacingly asking, “Where have you been?”