Chapter 22: Anomalous Time Zone

[The 22nd Evaluation Committee Member wants to know why I was so certain.]
YangZicang coughed twice, spitting out a clump of solidified blood residue, and then said weakly with fading breath:
“I know that I’m not worth the evaluation committee members taking time out of their busy schedules to make me choose a way to die early. So, if it is poisonous, whether it turns into a lethal poison or not makes no difference to me at this point.”
This was the crux of the matter.
“The reason you’ve shown up should be that this thing has a therapeutic effect, but it probably can’t help me fully recover.”
This is equivalent to a small bonus for enhancing the effectiveness of the medicine.
The feeling of the evaluation committee members’ gaze had completely vanished.
Full recovery would still take some time, but the scars over the wounds were already severe enough that they wouldn’t leave him immobilized. After pushing the iron door shut again, YangZicang leaned on his spear and walked out, a cool, wriggling sensation persisted in his chest.
……
Standing at the edge of the iron pipe jutting out from the cliff, he looked down at the scattered, shattered edge of the passageway below. It was an utterly appalling sight. The intense discomfort tugged even at his rapidly healing wounds.
Slivers of faint, blunt-edged rays of light refracted toward him.
{Ah, Brother Zicang, you—you’re actually…!}
At that moment, Liang Xi, his investor, proactively reached out. When she discovered that Yang Zicang was still alive, she nearly went wild with joy on the other end.
A warmth rose in Yang Zicang’s heart. He said:
“Sorry for wasting two hundred years of your lifespan. I’ll find a way to make it up to you as soon as possible.”
{No need, Brother Zicang—as long as you’re here… Ah!}
Liang Xi, while speaking, watched in shock as the figure with unsteady steps jumped off the cliff.
Thud! As Yang Zicang shifted his trajectory and landed heavily on the iron plate floor, the model gave two feedback responses.
[My ribs have offset a total of 1.11N.]
[My lower limbs have offset a total of 2.6N.]
[The rest of my skeletal frame has offset 4.3Y.]
“Hiss~ Don’t worry, I won’t die just yet. But, it turns out it still hurts.”
Yang Zicang stood up, leaning on his long spear.
He had a sudden insight that this temporal offset was compensating for the time needed to fully recover from injuries in the original world.
{Bro, could it be that you can change your trajectory even in midair? By the way, Captain Luo Xin just gave strict orders that nobody was allowed to kill even a single rat monster inside the monster nest.}
This was precisely what Yang Zicang was also worried about.
Just one short.
If one more rat monster died here, that monster known as “the Defender” would most likely appear. It turned out the people outside knew about this too.
Yang Zicang was somewhat puzzled.
“Yes, I was just thinking about whether I should raise funds to broadcast the situation here. Looks like you already know about it.”
Along the way, the monsters, having lost their leader, reverted to their timid nature and quickly fled to hide whenever they detected someone approaching.
{Bro Zicang, I found something. I knew there had to be good stuff inside the nest.}
In the sensory image, before the boy, there lay a broken vessel on the floor, hiding an item that resembled a incense iron ball.
“A legendary weapon?”
Liang Xi smiled sheepishly.
{Not exactly. It seems something can stimulate the creatures’ muscles. The reason the rats mutated is because of these items in the nests. If that monster hadn’t shown up, Captain Luo Xin would definitely have taken the opportunity, after the leader monster’s death, to come in here and find them.}
Liang Xi pulled out the small iron ball, about the size of a pebble, and began to head back.
After considerable effort, the two finally met near the exit.
“Chrono Weapon?”
As Yang Zicang approached, Liang Xi suddenly shuddered, his gaze fixed on the silver long spear.
“Haha, yes, this is what you’ve been longing for…”
Yang Zicang suddenly felt a strong, nauseating stench. A grimy Liang Xi said apologetically, “I… I had to do this to avoid the monsters detecting the human scent.”
“You’re truly brave.”
Yang Zicang joked and directly tossed the spear to Liang Xi, causing the boy to nearly jump for joy.
“Oh my god, a hundred years—it’s a Century Weapon! Ah! Ahhh!”
Liang Xi shouted and clumsily twirled the spear on the ground, his skin flushing with excitement.
This was such a rare Century Weapon! It was said that in this city, only a few leaders of major teams possessed such items.
“Brother Zicang, you’re definitely going to become a big shot someday. Compared to you, I’m nothing.”
Liang Xi returned it to Yang Zicang, a hint of disappointment in his voice.
“No, it’s we—we will surely all become big shots.”
Yang Zicang said with a smile, though there was a trace of seriousness in it. “After going through life and death twice, I’ve come to understand that truth.”
“What truth?”
The boy lifted his small face to look at the man, whose expression had grown somewhat solemn. In the dim light, the contour of his profile appeared resolute and full of strength.
“Springing to life from the brink of death—that’s precisely the performance the appraisal committee needs to see from us.”
Yang Zicang raised his head to gaze at the cold top of the pipeline, but his eyes seemed to pierce through the boundless void, staring into nothingness.
“I need to earn enough Chrono Merits before the end of this month—for myself, for the friends who are with me, and for the people I want to protect.”
The young man spoke as if muttering to himself, while Liang Xi pondered over what the appraisal committee was.
He waited expectantly for a few seconds, but the model didn’t respond at all.
“Did I guess wrong?” Yang Zicang thought to himself. “Maybe this level of difficulty doesn’t impress the appraisal committee, or perhaps they simply don’t care about it.”
……
Several lines as fine as hairs slid across.
Yang Zicang glanced at the gun by his side. With this thing around, he couldn’t return to the base camp or accept any Mental Links. Under his instructions, the little boy naturally refused all incoming Mental Links as well.
They pressed onward. The faint touch of energy fields brushed across his skin.
The dim passage ahead finally began to reveal a bit more light.
I’ve finally left this damn space.
Yang Zicang felt that ever since his second brush with death, the model seemed to have achieved a deeper level of synergy with his mind. Occasionally, it could vividly voice out some of his inner bursts of emotion—like this sigh, for instance.
So, what exactly is the model?
The entrance to the passage was right ahead, and Liang Xi first ran out with a hint of excitement. Yang Zicang smiled as he watched this brother-like boy scout the way ahead.
Then Yang Zicang’s gaze turned heavy—in his eyes, Liang Xi’s speed was increasing faster and faster.
This acceleration wasn’t just in running pace; it also included the boy’s head-turning, limb movements, and even the flow of his hair.
If his own acceleration was like making an ordinary person’s running form nimble, approaching an athlete’s level, then Liang Xi’s speed change here was a frequency boost.
The farther Liang Xi went, the faster his movements became, until they looked like sped-up footage in a movie.
“Zi Zang Ge?” “Come fast.” “Hey, Zi Zang Ge, what’s wrong with you?”
A overlapping, jumbled voice of the boy suddenly reached Yang Zicang’s ears, and his heart sank involuntarily.
“Can you hear me clearly? How’s my speech?” Yang Zicang said.
A cascade of quickly shifting facial expressions flickered across Liang Xi’s face. He ran back, and the closer he got, the more his frenetic movements returned to normal.
“Just now…”
“You heard me, right? Each word I spoke was many times longer?”
Liang Xi nodded.
This world was indeed full of sudden threats at every turn. Clearly, this wasn’t the right place to stop and study it. The monster in the cave behind them could burst out at any moment. Yang Zicang clenched his teeth, “Let’n get out first.”
“I just saw your moves slow down, really slow, like a sloth mouse,” Liang Xi said.
“So, in your own eyes, your posture was normal?”
The two hadn’t taken a few steps when a slow current of air swirled in from outside into the passage. The air flow accelerated rapidly, then quickly returned to stillness after a few seconds.
Glancing back at the darkness behind, a faint sense of danger lingered in the pitch-black pipe.
Was it a problem with the monster’s nest, or with the outside world? Perhaps the answer lay within this current of air.
Time within the area covered by the air current had been accelerated!
Yang Zicang naturally thought of the conditions for the birth of the Nightmare, and the Defender that was about to be born.
As for the last rat monster, could it also be canceled out by the time acceleration?
Was the purpose of the time shift to fast-track the final incubation of the Defender? Or to speed up the death of the rats?
Either way, the outcome was the same.
Yang Zicang felt a sense of suffocation, in the spiritual sense.
……
[Scheduling ability has been activated, target count set to 2. I will employ time sequence at 2R per second.]
After extracting ten years of lifespan for a fourfold boost, two figures—one short, one tall—darted swiftly through the wreckage of the reinforced concrete jungle.
“Faster.”
In the evening sky, purple miasma seeped through the air, and the sun was about to set. It should be around five or six in the afternoon.
[As the Great Quadrilateral, I have perceived that the trajectory of time is undergoing an unstable state of diffusion.]
“Zicang, do you feel that? The rate at which my lifespan is being drained is speeding up.”
Not only was there an accelerated time differential between the outside world and the nest, but his own life force was also draining away faster here.
However, the exact rate was currently impossible to determine. It might even be fluctuating inherently.
Regardless, this was disturbing news—other than knowing danger was present, everything else remained unknown.