“Straight guy?” Lin Xinlan seemed surprised, but then he nodded knowingly. “Yeah, that’s tricky. I definitely don’t mess with straight guys either.”

Ji Yushi: “…”

It seemed that Lin Xinlan had some deep misunderstandings about himself.

Lin Xinlan moved on from the topic of sexual orientation and started talking about something else: “You seem to get along well with everyone in the Seventh Squad, especially with Song Qinglan. It reminds me of when I used to go on missions with him.”

In Lin Xinlan’s memory, the Seventh Squad’s observer should have been Lao Yu. He was curious about what had happened over the course of the year that led to Lao Yu being replaced by Ji Yushi and caused Song Qinglan’s attitude toward him to change so drastically, though he didn’t dwell on it.

“Back then, we were both still in the training camp, and we worked really well together. Whatever I thought of, he’d think of too, and we completed a lot of missions together,” Lin Xinlan said. “On the trainees’ leaderboard, we were always the two tied for first place. Some people even called us the ‘Double Lan Duo.'”

Ji Yushi had already heard about this from Li Chun. It seemed like Lin Xinlan felt a bit frustrated talking about it.

“Old Song is a great guy, more capable than I am. I originally thought that once we got out of the training camp, we’d end up on the same team, and I could be his right-hand man. But, as Sky Vault grew, they became short on staff. I was pushed into the role of team captain for a new squad, and that’s how the Double Lan Duo got split up,” Lin Xinlan quickly shifted to the core of his thoughts. “Consultant Ji, why do you think, with Sky Vault becoming so powerful, we’re still getting pulled into these forced missions?”

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

It was the truth. The cunning “Sky Vault Across All Eras” had claimed that their squad had the highest success rate and was needed to help complete the mission. But why were these missions being assigned by a system with its own consciousness? What went wrong? That was something yet to be discovered.

Lin Xinlan told him, “There’s a conspiracy theory that time itself has started developing holes because Sky Vault has been artificially interfering with it. Not too long ago, an anti-time-management alliance popped up on the dark web. A lot of people think our work is pointless. They believe time is continuous, and even if Sky Vault fixes one potential hole, another will inevitably take its place.”

Ji Yushi remembered the protest he had seen in the Bubble World.

“Down with Sky Vault!!”

“Crossing time is illegal!!”

“Stop tampering with time!! Shut down the Sky Vault system!!”

“Overthrow the Time Management Alliance!!”

That large-scale protest in the Bubble World was rooted in the same unrest as Lin Xinlan described. Eventually, the situation in the real world would mirror that of the Bubble World.

“Our current situation…” Lin Xinlan glanced around the room. “It could be proving that point.”

Ji Yushi remained silent.

Lin Xinlan turned to him and said, “Maybe time travel should never have been invented.”

For a professional time traveler to question his own work so openly was bold. Lin Xinlan had guts.

Ji Yushi didn’t respond to his statement. He wasn’t someone with grand ambitions or a desire to make a big impact as a guardian, so he didn’t share the same sentiments.

“Don’t worry, I’m just talking,” Lin Xinlan said with a smile. “Judging from your reaction when you saw me, it looks like I didn’t quit a year from now.”

Ji Yushi nodded. “No, you didn’t.”

Lin Xinlan put away the dice he had been playing with and added cryptically, “Besides, I enjoy the thrill of trying to surpass Song Qinglan on the leaderboard too much.”

Ji Yushi: “…”

After sitting in the room for a while, Ji Yushi checked his communicator. “It’s been twenty minutes.”

Could they really have gotten separated, as Lin Xinlan feared? Ji Yushi didn’t think Song Qinglan would take this long to find them.

Lin Xinlan began inspecting the surrounding rooms again, holding the blue sphere to check for any changes in color.

As Lin Xinlan was doing this, the “beep—” sound rang out, and the round door at the back opened.

To their surprise, it was the same team that had mocked them in the slow-motion room. A dark-skinned traveler appeared at the door, his expression startled when he saw them. “You guys made it out?! Where are the other two?”

Ji Yushi’s face remained impassive.

The man continued, “Hey! Can you check if there are any markings in the room you’re in?”

Ji Yushi asked in French, “Which number?”

“32!” the traveler replied.

Ji Yushi answered, “No markings.”

The man cursed under his breath and yelled down to his teammates, “These travelers say there are no markings in there! But why are we going in circles? Why?!”

“Beep—”

That group, rude as ever, shut the door and vanished again.

Lin Xinlan, who didn’t understand what was said, asked Ji Yushi for an explanation.

Ji Yushi briefly summarized, “They’re going in circles.”

Lin Xinlan recalled the “29” that Ji Yushi had written and couldn’t help but laugh. Just then, the top door opened with another “beep—.”

Both of them quickly looked up.

But it wasn’t Song Qinglan or Duan Wen. Instead, a new face appeared—a red-haired female traveler peered through the door and called out in English, “It’s safe!”

Lin Xinlan and Ji Yushi stepped back.

The redhead, followed by four teammates, climbed down from the room above.

This group seemed relatively new to the maze, with expressions of excitement like they were solving a puzzle. The redhead even greeted Ji Yushi and Lin Xinlan. “Hey there.”

The 20-square-meter room suddenly felt much more crowded with seven people inside.

One of the travelers approached Lin Xinlan and asked, “Mind if I use the key?”

“Key?” Lin Xinlan repeated.

The group was eyeing the blue sphere in Lin Xinlan’s hand.

They simply wanted to open the surrounding doors and move on. They were just passing through.

Lin Xinlan handed over the sphere without hesitation and casually asked, “By the way, have any of you seen our teammates on your way here?”

Ji Yushi and Lin Xinlan were both wearing black combat uniforms from their own era, and although their team numbers were different, the uniforms were clearly from the same organization.

The group all shook their heads, indicating they hadn’t seen anyone, before selecting a new room to explore.

“Goodbye, friends from another time!”

“Maybe we’ll meet again somewhere in the timeline!”

With an optimistic farewell, the group dramatically exited the room.

It seemed they came from a more peaceful time.

After two groups of travelers passed through, Ji Yushi said, “Captain Lin, let’s go.”

Lin Xinlan asked, “You don’t want to wait for them?”

“We can’t wait any longer,” Ji Yushi said, accepting the fact that even though they had figured out the rules, they couldn’t just stay in the same room and wait for their teammates. “Everyone, including us, has likely already understood the safety conditions of identical, adjacent, and opposing colors. The more people figure out the patterns, the more will start moving forward. Haven’t you noticed more people around lately?”

Lin Xinlan nodded. “Yeah, it’s strange. Are they all heading toward the center block?”

Ji Yushi continued, “In this situation, even if we stay put, we’ll be moved by others. So, we should stick to our original plan and move forward. We might meet up with them along the way.”

With that, they continued.

Ji Yushi didn’t sound disappointed. He quickly made a second decision, staying calm and decisive, which Lin Xinlan admired.

The center block remained a mystery.

Why were there no rooms in this cube-like structure that shared two colors at adjacent corners, as you’d expect?

Was the center block empty, or was there something else inside?

Even without solid leads, moving toward the center provided a sense of purpose. It kept them going.

They passed through two more rooms, with Ji Yushi leading the way and making marks as they went.

Yellow, blue, purple, red, green, green—their journey continued through various colors, and the repetition was starting to wear on them.

In a new room, Ji Yushi hesitated, his hand pausing in the middle of marking. “…How can this be?”

Lin Xinlan came over. “What did you find?”

When Lin Xinlan saw the situation, his tone changed too. “We’ve been here before?!”

On the floor were marks that only Ji Yushi could understand — two of them. And Ji Yushi hadn’t even made his mark yet.

Lin Xinlan asked, “Could those people have figured out that we were messing with them and deliberately left marks to mislead us?”

That was the only possibility Lin Xinlan could think of. If they had been here before, how could there be two identical marks on the floor?

“No,” Ji Yushi said, rubbing his fingers over the scratches on the floor. “I made these. I wouldn’t mistake them.”

Lin Xinlan: “Are you sure? Maybe they mimicked your handwriting.”

Ji Yushi repeated, more firmly this time: “I wouldn’t get this wrong.”

The strange sight sent chills down both their spines.

“These are the ninth and tenth rooms we’ve been through.” Ji Yushi pointed to the two symbols. “This one is from the slow-motion blue room, and this one is from the adjacent blue room where we entered after rolling the dice.”

Lin Xinlan: “Two blues? Are you saying these two blue rooms have overlapped?”

“I don’t know,” Ji Yushi replied, his lashes lowered as he made another mark between the two symbols.

Even if the rooms they had passed through were moved due to the increased number of travelers, it still didn’t explain why they had overlapped.

In the next new room, Lin Xinlan’s voice suddenly disappeared from behind him. Ji Yushi turned and saw Lin Xinlan frozen at the edge of the round doorway, his entire body immobile like a static shadow.

“Captain Lin?!”

At first, Ji Yushi thought they had entered another slow-motion room, but then he quickly realized — time discrepancy!

Even though the sphere’s color was different, the time in this room was no longer aligned with the time they had come from, just like how Song Qinglan and Ji Yushi had experienced different time flows before reuniting. The difference in time caused them to miss each other.

“Beep—”

The round doorway closed, leaving Ji Yushi alone in the room. He grabbed the floating purple sphere, but Lin Xinlan’s figure was no longer visible. His room had been moved elsewhere.

Ji Yushi stood in silence. Everything was far beyond his expectations, completely out of control.

Alone, Ji Yushi began checking the surrounding room colors. When he reached the next round doorway, he froze.

In front of him was a room that had never appeared before.

The walls were pristine white, the light bright and clear. It was neither empty nor filled with multicolored hues as they had imagined. In the center of the room floated a single black sphere.

Ji Yushi had reached the center block.

He pulled out the zipper head from his pocket and tossed it into the room. There was a clear sound as it landed. The small zipper head was nearly impossible to track, but Ji Yushi’s sharp vision and heightened focus allowed him to follow it perfectly. It lay intact in the center block.

Ji Yushi climbed up another step, standing at the edge of the ladder. A voice in his head warned him not to go in. His rationality and fear spoke up, telling him that if he made a mistake, he would face death and failure, losing his place in the mission. If he died in the center block, his teammates might lose track of him entirely. Would Song Qinglan continue searching for him?

But despite all these thoughts, Ji Yushi climbed into the round doorway.

As soon as he stepped inside, the purple sphere in his hand bounced back, and the door closed behind him.

Suddenly, darkness enveloped him, and silence followed. He couldn’t tell where he was.

There was no light, no sound — only a deathly stillness.

Ji Yushi couldn’t even hear his own breathing.

Am I dead?

At the thought, faint rays of light appeared in the darkness. Then, in a flash, the space around him burst into radiant colors.

It was as though Ji Yushi was standing in the vastness of the universe, with no boundaries above or below. He stood in the center of a brilliant river of stars.

He realized that the stars were actually countless cubes of different colors, glowing in six different shades. They resembled lines of light crossing and intersecting in every direction.

A distant memory resurfaced in Ji Yushi’s mind.

In the Sky Vault Academy, a lecturer had once gently explained to the students, drawing a glowing line in the air: “Our nation’s science team invented Sky Vault. They discovered that time doesn’t consist of just one line.”

The single line had then split into countless thin lines, slowly merging with the scene in front of him.

Ji Yushi walked among the intersecting lights, and with every step he took, the scenery around him shifted, with no distinction between up or down, before or after.

These lines seemed to be broken in places, with blue intersecting with red, or purple with yellow. The cubes of various colors, inserted randomly, disrupted the continuity of these lines.

Ji Yushi stopped walking.

The cubes were flickering, opening their circular doorways on different sides.

He saw travelers of different races and eras passing through them. Some died, some despaired, and some spiraled endlessly within. Others emerged from capsule pods, entering new rooms.

He saw the cubes shift in position, constantly rearranging themselves.

Ji Yushi, like the time traveler in the picture book The Time Traveler he had read as a child, witnessed countless eras within these wormholes.

As the travelers moved, some colors blended into new ones while others gradually faded, all changing in ways Ji Yushi had never seen before. The travelers walked through these fragments of time, trying to piece them together according to Sky Vault’s instructions.

Mission mode: Cube.

Mission goal: Splice.

Someone had once asked him, “Could it be that this mission is just literal? It might not have any deeper meaning. After all, it’s just an artificial intelligence without complex intent.”

Someone else had once asked him, “Can’t restore it? So you’re just going to take it apart?”

In that moment, Ji Yushi suddenly understood.

A weight pressed down on his shoulder as someone called his name from behind, “Ji Yushi.”

Startled, Ji Yushi turned around. The first thing he saw was a chin covered in stubble, and then, as he raised his gaze, he met a pair of steady black eyes.

Behind Song Qinglan stood Duan Wen and a bloodied Zhou Mingxuan. All three had arrived at the center block.

The scene before them left no time for greetings or small talk. Everyone stood still, gazing around in awe.

Ji Yushi’s eyes sparkled with wonder, while Song Qinglan, almost immediately losing interest in the dazzling lights of time and space, naturally moved to stand beside him, looking up as well.

“Not bad,” Song Qinglan said lazily. “How does it compare to the time rift in Chaos?”

“It’s different,” Ji Yushi replied.

In the Chaos time rift, Ji Yushi had once stood beneath the aurora, breath taken away by the colossal silver planet passing over a sea of metal scrap. He had been soaked by the spray of suspended oceans as whales swam by and shivered in the cold wind blowing from upside-down snowy mountains.

But the one thing that had stayed the same was the person standing beside him.

“Probably only our job allows us to see this kind of scenery,” Song Qinglan said. “It’s like an exclusive sightseeing ticket — limited edition.”

Ji Yushi turned to Song Qinglan and said, “I know what’s going on here now.”