The afterglow on the horizon was gradually fading. Before the sun sank below the mountains, its last ray of golden light slanted into the cave where Hao Ren and Nolan were temporarily hiding, coating everything inside with shifting, mottled shadows of pale gold. Nolan sat sideways against the massive tire of the mountain vehicle, half her body bathed in the setting sun while the other half remained hidden in darkness. She let out a breath. "Where should I begin...? I can't even remember when I first realized something was wrong with this world. Maybe several thousand years ago? Or perhaps even earlier. The earliest scene I remember is going on vacation with my family in the countryside of the Southern Hemisphere. Then, somehow, I woke up one day and found myself working as a warehouse keeper for some company... There's no point digging into things that happened so long ago. They were all just chaotic experiences repeating endlessly. Sometimes I'd die in an accident, and after reviving, I'd find that the world had completely changed. Sometimes things would happen like they did today: I wouldn't die, yet the entire world would suddenly change, and in the blink of an eye, I'd have a new identity and new teammates. I don't even know whether the passage of time I feel is real—perhaps all of this happened only a few hours ago, and every world began just a few hours ago... But that doesn't matter either."
Hao Ren listened quietly. There were too many questions in his mind, but he couldn't organize them in any particular order, so he simply asked whatever came to mind. "Is there any pattern to the world's resets?"
"No pattern." Nolan shook her head. "Sometimes it resets once every few decades, and sometimes changes happen within just