Everyone was exhausted, so even though they had planned to rest for twenty minutes, they ended up resting for nearly two hours.

Even Song Qinglan sat on the floor, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. He had been mentally tense for a long time, and now, as he relaxed, his arm casually rested on his knee, like a big cat dozing off.

Duan Wen had completely fallen asleep, lightly snoring. Lin Xinlan sat nearby, fiddling with his dice before closing his eyes as well.

The room became quiet.

Ji Yushi played on his handheld game console for a while, but the relaxing and drowsy atmosphere soon got to him. For the first time in a while, he felt sleepy. He put away the game console, his eyelids drooping, and before long, he slipped into a deep sleep.

Ji Yushi hadn’t had such a dream in a long time.

He was back in his childhood, at the age before he even started elementary school.

It was raining outside, the pitter-patter of the drops filling the air. He moved a stool to climb up his father’s bookshelf, trying to find a book to read. His small body couldn’t reach the higher shelves, but there was one book he was aiming for, *Time Travelers*, one of the few non-academic books on his father’s shelf—a science fiction novel.

He had read it many times before, though he still didn’t recognize most of the words. The illustrations, however, were captivating: a traveler passing through a wormhole, witnessing countless eras.

Just as his hand was about to reach the book, he felt his body lifted, and he was placed gently on the sofa.

His father crouched down in front of him, pulling out a box tied with a bow, speaking softly, “Ji Ji, guess what this is?”

“What is it?” he asked.

Every time his father returned from a trip, he brought back an old trinket Ji Yushi had never seen before. Sometimes it was a tin frog that jumped when pressed, sometimes a battery-powered toy train, and once it was a wind-up music box.

What would it be this time?

Eagerly, Ji Yushi unwrapped the small gift to find a colorful, square-shaped cube inside.

His father explained, “This is a 3×3 Rubik’s Cube. It’s a souvenir from my research project.”

Ji Yushi curiously took it out, finding it larger than his small hands. “A souvenir? What does it commemorate?”

His father smiled. “It commemorates something meaningful.”

His father scrambled the cube and, right in front of Ji Yushi, quickly solved it in a matter of seconds. Ji Yushi watched in amazement, letting out a gasp of awe.

His father patted his head. “Go ahead, try it yourself.”

Ji Yushi sat on the sofa, trying to mix up the Rubik’s Cube and solve it like his father had.

But it was much harder than he imagined.

He played with it for a long time, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t restore it to its original state, let alone match his father’s speed. By the time his father came to check on him again, he sounded a bit helpless. “Ji Ji…”

On the sofa, the Rubik’s Cube was completely disassembled into its individual pieces.

And there Ji Yushi was, trying to put it back together from the core block, piece by piece.

“See, I can put it back together this way too.” He held up the half-reassembled cube, smiling a little.

His father chuckled. “You’re taking it apart because you can’t solve it? You’re just like I was when I was a kid.”

“Dad, were you a dummy too when you were little?” he asked.

“No,” his father said, smiling. “I was just like you—very smart.”

“Consultant Ji.”

Ji Yushi opened his eyes to see his teammates ready to move again.

Song Qinglan was inspecting the surrounding rooms for any changes, Lin Xinlan was stretching, and Duan Wen had woken him up.

After such a long rest, everyone seemed rejuvenated.

The memory of the dream lingered in Ji Yushi’s mind for a few moments before he stood up from the floor.

Seeing that Ji Yushi was awake, Song Qinglan asked, “How was the rest?”

Ji Yushi replied, “Not bad.”

Song Qinglan nodded, effortlessly jumping down from the ladder. “The gray room adjacent to this one is gone, replaced by a yellow one. Someone must have passed through. Now we have gray, yellow, red, blue, and blue around us. If we’re heading toward the core, it should be nearby.”

Duan Wen asked, “There weren’t many yellow rooms earlier, right? Should we try the yellow room?”

Lin Xinlan added, “There’s no green here. If green appears next to blue or red, we could also consider those.”

The three of them discussed it briefly, their thoughts clearer after the break.

Ji Yushi pulled up the diagram on his communicator. With the help of the holographic projection, he had been tracking their movements throughout the journey. He said, “This room is purple. If we follow the logic, the opposite of purple should be green. We can try going downward, into the blue room.”

Everyone agreed with the plan. Lin Xinlan smiled and said, “Great minds think alike.”

Before the break, Lin Xinlan had been skeptical about continuing, but now he seemed more eager. It was understandable—no one wanted to be left alone in these rooms.

So, they acted immediately.

Song Qinglan held the purple sphere, waiting for everyone to descend into the blue room through the lower circular door. Once they were inside, he released the sphere and climbed down the ladder himself.

This was a new blue room they hadn’t been in before, so Ji Yushi marked it as usual.

“Captain Song!”

Lin Xinlan, holding the blue sphere, was on the right-side ladder when he called out.

Song Qinglan responded, “What?”

Lin Xinlan had apparently discovered something behind the door, instinctively calling for Song Qinglan.

Duan Wen shrugged.

“There’s someone here!” Lin Xinlan said. “Come take a look!”

Song Qinglan, of course, wasn’t concerned about Lin Xinlan in a romantic sense. He wasn’t so self-conscious. Hearing the urgency in Lin’s voice, he walked over, and Lin Xinlan jumped down, giving him space.

What had he found?

Ji Yushi and Duan Wen also looked toward the right.

Song Qinglan called out a few times to the person in the room across from them, but there was no response. He turned back. “It seems like this person can’t hear us.”

Ji Yushi moved to take a look, but Song Qinglan didn’t step down. Instead, he reached out and helped Ji Yushi up the ladder.

The space was small, so Song Qinglan had to stand sideways to make room.

Ji Yushi’s expression changed when he saw the person behind the door, and he instinctively spoke in Japanese: “Morita!”

Twenty-something hours ago, Morita Yuu had died right in front of Ji Yushi. But now, here he was again.

From their vantage point, they saw Morita kneeling on the ground, muttering something. Just as Song Qinglan had said, Morita couldn’t hear them and was oblivious to their presence.

Ji Yushi stared at the “resurrected” Morita intently.

A few seconds later, Morita suddenly looked to one side as if hearing something.

Both of them followed Morita’s gaze, but there was nothing there—just a smooth white wall.

Morita stood up and shouted at the wall, “Who’s there? Wait! Don’t go!!”

After shouting, Morita quickly grabbed the floating red sphere in the room, opened the door, and hurriedly climbed up the ladder.

Song Qinglan asked, “You know him?”

“I do,” Ji Yushi replied, still puzzled. “He’s the traveler I told you about—the one who was decapitated.”

Seeing the living Morita in front of him, Song Qinglan frowned. How could someone who had been beheaded come back to life?

Could it be that death in this mission wasn’t what they had thought?

“Beep—”

Morita disappeared through the circular door, which closed behind him.

“Beep—”

At the same time the door closed, another door opened.

To their shock, Morita, who had just disappeared, was now climbing down from another direction!

The scene made them doubt their own eyes, but Ji Yushi quickly noticed the red sphere floating in the room.

A lightbulb went off in his mind, and he exclaimed, “It’s a recording!”

Both of them were still perched at the circular door.

Watching the strange sequence unfold, Song Qinglan asked, “What recording?”

“It’s the room that’s recording!” Ji Yushi explained. “Remember how I told you that after Zoe left the room, I stayed behind and saw us entering and leaving the room repeatedly?”

Song Qinglan nodded. “Of course.”

Ji Yushi continued, “Morita told me that when he was alone in a red room, he noticed someone open the door and look at him, but that person didn’t come in. He was a little disappointed.”

At the time, Morita had comforted Ji Yushi, saying that the person passing by might have been one of his teammates.

The scene they were witnessing was the reenactment of everything Morita had described.

Morita once again entered the center of the room.

He knelt on the floor, muttering to himself, then looked up again as if sensing something. He stood up and shouted, “Who’s there? Wait! Don’t go!!”

Morita then opened the door and left the room.

Immediately after, another Morita climbed down from a different circular door in the wall.

Again and again, the process repeated.

Ji Yushi climbed down the ladder first, with Song Qinglan following.

Both Duan Wen and Lin Xinlan overheard the conversation between Ji Yushi and Song Qinglan and quickly climbed up the ladder to see what was happening.

Ji Yushi explained his thoughts: “The Morita we’re seeing in the room now, just like when I kept seeing ‘us’ entering the room over and over, isn’t really here. It’s a trace of him left in the room.”

Song Qinglan asked, “So, you’re saying that these rooms record everything that happens once someone enters?”

Ji Yushi nodded. “Yes.”

Lin Xinlan found their theory intriguing and asked, “But if that’s true, then why didn’t we see those jerks in the super slow-motion room?”

“That’s a good question,” Ji Yushi replied. “I’m not sure if every room records, or if only certain rooms do. Because every time we leave a room, it moves, and we can’t go back to check if it was recording. But I have a theory.”

Ji Yushi glanced at Song Qinglan, as if asking for permission to continue.

Song Qinglan nodded, allowing him to go on.

Ji Yushi continued, “These rooms have time discrepancies, and each one is different. We could think of them as short segments of time and space. The room records everything that happens from the moment someone enters until they leave. Essentially, it records the process of entering and leaving, and only refreshes when someone enters again. When Zoe left the room alone, she completed the ‘enter and leave’ cycle, which is why I was able to see the repeated record of our actions.”

Lin Xinlan nodded, understanding now. “So, you’re saying that the room may have originally recorded those jerks entering and leaving, and it only refreshed when we entered?”

Ji Yushi confirmed, “Yes. In the super slow-motion room, if it really was recording, staying at the door for a bit longer might have shown us the recorded scene.”

Lin Xinlan thought for a moment but didn’t ask more questions. He knew Ji Yushi was probably holding back some key information—likely related to the time discrepancy. If these rooms really recorded events as Ji Yushi described, it could be a major clue for understanding the time discrepancies and possibly even the so-called ‘puzzle.’

After Duan Wen climbed down the ladder, Song Qinglan said, “Let’s keep moving.”

This time, they chose a room with a green sphere.

Upon entering, they saw Zhou Mingxuan, but it was just another recording. Zhou Mingxuan appeared like a captured lone wolf, his hands tied behind his back, and a gun pressed against the back of his head as he was forced to move forward.

He was accompanied by three or four white men in light blue uniforms, who periodically cursed at him in strange words.

Zhou Mingxuan seemed reluctant to comply but was forced to move forward, being used as a human shield to ensure their safety.

In this recorded scene, every time Zhou Mingxuan passed the center of the room, he would look up, as if locking eyes with the team above.

Duan Wen was furious and started cursing, while Song Qinglan’s eyes darkened, clearly preparing for a storm.

Who knew how many other rooms in this massive cube held similar scenes, with travelers trapped like ants in a sandbox, unable to find a way out?

Up, down, left, forward.

Each time they entered a room with a recording, the images would vanish, leaving no trace behind.

As they moved through the ever-changing colors of rooms—blue, purple, gray, red, green, blue—they felt they were getting closer to the center, but it always seemed just out of reach.

“We seem to be going in circles,” Duan Wen said. “Why does it feel like it’s never-ending?”

“That just means this place is bigger than we thought,” Song Qinglan replied. “If we were really going in circles, we’d see the marks we left earlier.”

Song Qinglan’s reasoning made sense, and Duan Wen was amazed. Just how big was this place?

While Duan Wen grew agitated and Lin Xinlan remained mostly silent, Ji Yushi remained incredibly patient. As long as they could ensure their safety, to him, this was like a maze game from his childhood—he could keep going indefinitely.

“Let’s head left, to the yellow room,” Song Qinglan checked the communicator. “If I’m right, there should be a purple room above.”

Inside the yellow room, they encountered two unfamiliar travelers holding half of a corpse, sitting on the floor, looking vacant and on the verge of collapse.

But when the team climbed down the ladder, they realized it was just another recording—the travelers disappeared, leaving only the half-corpse and scattered belongings.

Ji Yushi averted his gaze, making sure not to focus on the body.

They silently left that room and ascended into the purple room above.

As they left, the yellow room they had just been in shifted to the right, turning green. Now they were surrounded by rooms colored blue, purple, gray, red, and green, but still, no sign of the center block.

“I wonder how Chun’er and the others are doing. What if we’re walking in the opposite direction from them?” Duan Wen asked. “Damn, just thinking about it makes me want a smoke.”

His addiction to cigarettes was flaring up.

Ji Yushi added, “Thinking makes me want to take some meds.”

The group: “…”

Ji Yushi deadpanned, “Just kidding. I’m perfectly alert.”

Song Qinglan didn’t even consider the request, continuing from Duan Wen’s topic, “If they’re walking in the opposite direction from us, they might end up at the edge of this superstructure, which might be better than circling the center.”

He paused for a moment. “If we don’t find anything in the center, we can also try heading to the edge to see what’s there. Who knows, the capsule pods might still be there…”

Duan Wen’s spirits lifted. “That’s a good point!”

With each step forward, the center block seemed more and more elusive.

Following the room movement patterns, Ji Yushi continued to simulate the route they had taken in his holographic projection, calculating the next moves. But the distribution of colors and room movements were more complicated than anticipated, making it difficult to compute.

Lost in thought, Ji Yushi instinctively reached into his pocket, only to remember that Song Qinglan had confiscated his pillbox.

He had a dependency on those meds, and his earlier comment about wanting a pill wasn’t entirely a joke.

Still, he didn’t intend to ask Song Qinglan for it. Instead, he bit his lip and continued adjusting the colored cubes in the hologram.

While the others were inspecting the surrounding rooms, Ji Yushi felt a tap on his arm. He looked up to see Song Qinglan placing something in his hand.

When Ji Yushi opened his palm, he found a piece of chocolate wrapped in gold foil.

Where had it come from?

Song Qinglan gave him a sidelong glance, his usual nonchalant expression in place. He pressed a finger to his lips in a “shh” gesture, his eyes saying, “This is a reward for you.”

Ji Yushi’s heart skipped a beat. Quietly, he unwrapped the chocolate, hesitating for a moment before deciding whether or not to eat the mysterious treat.

“It’s clean. I just picked it up, and there was only one,” Song Qinglan said in a low voice. “Now you can think straight.”

With that, Song Qinglan walked away, leaving Duan Wen to climb up and check the next room.

Ji Yushi ate the chocolate.

The bitter taste spread across his tongue, and as it melted, it turned into a subtle sweetness, completely distracting him from his previous thoughts.

“Over here.”

Song Qinglan had already decided on their next move and signaled the group to follow.

There was an unspoken understanding between the men, and they took turns leading. This time, it was Lin Xinlan’s turn to go down first, with Ji Yushi close behind.

Without the risk of random dangers, this repetitive task of room exploration was becoming mind-numbing.

Ji Yushi had just landed when Duan Wen shouted from above, “Consultant Ji!!”

Before Duan Wen could even finish saying his name, the telltale “beep—” sounded, and the circular door above them closed!

Both Lin Xinlan and Ji Yushi were startled. The ladder had vanished, meaning the room above had already moved. Ji Yushi quickly grabbed the floating green sphere and opened the door, climbing back up the ladder.

The room had been replaced, and there was no one inside.

“Where are they?!” Lin Xinlan asked, looking up at Ji Yushi. “Are they still there?”

Ji Yushi climbed back down, calm despite the situation. “The room moved. They’ve gone to another room.”

Ji Yushi’s calm demeanor surprised Lin Xinlan. He had expected Ji Yushi to be more panicked at being separated from his teammates, but Ji Yushi remained collected. It seemed that being alone didn’t rattle him as much as Lin Xinlan had thought.

Their four-person team had suddenly been reduced to just the two of them—the least familiar pair.

As the captain of the Ninth Squad, Lin Xinlan didn’t have much experience with interdimensional missions, but he was still one of the elite guardians of Sky Vault. He quickly pieced together what had happened. “So someone nearby moved, which triggered our original room to shift, right?”

“Yes,” Ji Yushi confirmed.

Lin Xinlan, with his tall, elegant frame, stood in front of Ji Yushi. The dried bloodstains on his black uniform only added to his striking appearance, making the atmosphere between them feel a bit off.

Though Ji Yushi was naturally quiet, he took the initiative to reassure him, “Don’t worry. We both understand the room movement pattern, so we should be able to reunite soon.”

Lin Xinlan wasn’t particularly worried either. “Should we go find them, or let them find us?”

If both groups moved simultaneously, the chances of getting separated again would only increase.

“They’ll come to us,” Ji Yushi said. “As long as we stay put, it’s more likely they’ll find us.”

His statement was simple, but it spoke volumes about the trust and understanding between the Seventh Squad members.

Or more specifically, the trust and understanding between Ji Yushi and Song Qinglan.

Seeing Lin Xinlan smile faintly, Ji Yushi added, “Before we came down, they saw the color of this new room. As long as we don’t move, they’ll find us sooner.”

The two of them sat down in the room and waited.

After about ten seconds of silence, Ji Yushi considered pulling out his game console to play some Tetris, but Lin Xinlan broke the silence with a question.

“Consultant Ji, I’ve heard you have an exceptional memory. Is that how you learned so many languages?”

Ji Yushi replied, “Not entirely. I learned some of them in university with foreign classmates.”

Lin Xinlan nodded in understanding. “Boyfriend?”

Before Ji Yushi could respond, Lin Xinlan quickly added, “Sorry, I didn’t know if you were comfortable talking about your orientation.”

“I don’t mind,” Ji Yushi said. “But no, not a boyfriend.”

There’s a saying that the fastest way to learn a language is through a romantic relationship.

But that wasn’t the case for Ji Yushi.

Lin Xinlan’s questions weren’t intrusive; they felt more like casual conversation to pass the time. As he tossed his dice in the air, he remarked, “So you’re single? Someone as exceptional as you is still single? If I didn’t have my own preferences, I’d consider pursuing you myself.”

Having been approached by many people before, Ji Yushi responded straightforwardly, “I already like someone.”

Lin Xinlan asked, “Then why not pursue them?”

A lingering taste of chocolate seemed to remain on his tongue—bitter, yet faintly sweet.

Ji Yushi replied calmly, “He’s straight.”