More Than One

The countdown to return is 47:59:58.

The countdown to return is 47:59:57.

Did I travel?

So the end of the countdown is traveling to another time and space, and the countdown to return refers to the time to go back.

Thinking of this, Qing Chen breathed a sigh of relief. It was good that he could go back.

Although it was not certain that anyone would miss him there, his mother had a new life and didn't have the time to miss him, and his father... was probably in the detention center.

So he probably wouldn't have the time to miss him either.

But even so, he still wanted to go back and see.

And what he had to do now was to live well within these 48 hours.

So... it was the first day of the countdown.

Qing Chen began to re-examine the "New World" before him.

The moment the world pieced itself back together, Qing Chen saw the prison uniform on his body and instantly understood his predicament.

He was in a dim, gray room. Apart from an alloy gate full of technological flair, the other walls were completely sealed.

The 90-centimeter-wide door had a small window, but it was currently closed.

The cell was a single room, with only a bed covered by a thin sheet.

Next to it was a shelf. Besides a quilt, toothbrush, and towel, the shelf was empty.

The cell walls were gray, but what Qing Chen couldn't understand was that under the faint light from outside, these gray walls were clearly emitting a metallic luster.

Metal walls?

Qing Chen sat up and dazedly touched the wall. What kind of place would use such building materials without regard for cost?

It was clear that this place did not belong to the world he had known.

He quickly looked down at his palm. The fingerprints on this palm were exactly the same as his before, even the positions of the pores on his hands were identical.

This was his own body.

After traveling to this world, the boning knife in Qing Chen's hand was gone, and his original clothes were also gone, but his body was definitely his own.

Fingerprints and pore positions couldn't be faked.

Qing Chen sat on the bed with his knees hugged, staring at the heavy alloy door, lost in thought.

Slowly, the noise outside began to grow, and there were even sounds of people forcefully banging on the alloy cell door.

Qing Chen slowly walked to the door, trying to press his ear against it to hear what they were shouting outside. Before he could hear clearly, the alloy door emitted a clear pneumatic transmission sound, and the door opened.

He looked outside. Beyond the door was a corridor that formed a loop.

This square prison fortress had seven floors, and each floor had densely packed, neatly arranged cells.

Outside, in the vast and empty prison fortress, only scattered lights were on. The opened alloy doors revealed dim cells, like cages for wild beasts.

Qing Chen stood inside the doorway. It seemed that as soon as he took this step, he would embark on an unknown life.

Somewhere in the vast prison, a broadcast suddenly sounded, with a pleasant female voice: "It is 7 AM, breakfast time. All inmates are requested to line up in order and proceed to the dining hall for meals."

The voice echoed through the prison fortress, while Qing Chen continued to look at the threshold before him.

It seemed that as long as he stepped out, everything would be different.

Actually, he felt that he had already become different from a certain point on.

When did it start?

Perhaps it was... when he thought he only had two and a half hours left to live, so he did the things he wanted to do most but had never dared to do before.

He had even reported his own father, so what else was there that he couldn't face?

He stepped out of the cell.

But in the next moment, he froze again.

He saw that in the not-so-spacious corridor outside, there was a prisoner standing in front of each cell door.

Qing Chen's pupils contracted sharply:

An old man, hunched over, looked at him. In the old man's eye socket, there was a mechanical eye emitting a faint red glow. The entire right eye socket was a mechanical structure, and this metal component extended all the way to the right temple.

The mechanical eye didn't look refined, it even looked a bit crude, but for some reason, Qing Chen felt a sense of pressure from this eye staring at him.

It was as if the other party was analyzing the details of his body.

Just like how he used his memory to analyze others.

A burly middle-aged prisoner had his entire right arm made of machinery. As the prisoner moved his fingers, Qing Chen could hear the metallic sound of mechanical parts rotating as his palm opened and closed.

That thick metal arm, like knotted steel muscles, was strong and violent.

In this entire prison fortress, as many as half of the people possessed mechanical limbs.

Mechanical Civilization.

Four words popped into Qing Chen's mind.

Before he could ponder further, the burly prisoner in the adjacent cell grinned at him. "Hey, new guy, don't eat too much for breakfast. You'll look pretty bad when you throw it up."

As soon as he spoke, a wave of laughter erupted from the corridor. "I heard they brought in twelve new people last night. We can have some fun today."

"This kid doesn't have any mechanical limbs at all. Looks like he doesn't have any connections outside."

When Qing Chen heard the words "new guy," he paused, thinking they knew he had just arrived from Earth.

But he quickly realized the "new guy" likely referred to his recent arrival in the prison. They probably didn't know he was from Earth.

Qing Chen frowned, contemplating that the "fun" they mentioned would likely be a disaster for him.

But the question was, how could he survive among these mechanical "beasts"?

He suppressed the turmoil and fear within him. Faced with such a sudden and brutal change, a normal high school student like Qing Chen could only force himself not to show any unusual reactions.

He didn't know what consequences revealing his origins from another world would bring.

Suddenly, a teenager on the fourth floor corridor opposite went berserk. "What is this place! I want to go home! I don't want to stay in this hellhole, who are you people!? I'm Huang Jixian, my dad is the chairman of the Yongli Group in Luocheng. Stay away from me!"

Saying that, the teenager started running frantically down the corridor.

The others didn't move, watching like spectators, still maintaining their lines to head to the mess hall.

Someone asked with confusion, "Where is Luocheng?"

Abruptly, Qing Chen heard a buzzing sound from above. He looked up and saw four box-like drones detach from the high, deep ceiling and begin to fall.

Qing Chen's gaze fixed on the ceiling. Embedded neatly in the alloy walls were eighteen Gatling-style six-barreled machine gun turrets, hanging upside down.

As the panicked teenager ran, the muzzles of nine of the machine guns also turned!

"Please stop moving," a female voice came from the drones. "Warning again, please stop moving."

Immediately after, a female voice broadcasted throughout the prison fortress: "All inmates, remain in place."

In just over ten seconds, the four drones had cornered the teenager in a section of the corridor, with gun muzzles pointing at him from directly below each drone.

At the same time, a gate opened below the prison fortress, and nine robots armed with unknown firearms entered at full speed.

The teenager fearfully slumped against the wall, while Qing Chen coldly observed everything.

The teenager's actions were a bit extreme, but they helped Qing Chen gather a lot of information.

Machine guns, drones, robots, mechanical limbs – countless pieces of information flooded his mind at once.

But what surprised Qing Chen the most was that, looking at the teenager's behavior, he suddenly realized: he might not be the only person who had come here from Earth.

Not the first, and likely not the last.