When the darkness faded, Qing Chen was still drenched in sweat. He glanced at the night outside the window, then at his little room on Xingshu Road.
They had only been apart for a second, yet he already kind of missed that gloomy prison.
Qing Chen spat the USB drive out of his mouth, then looked at his palm again. The gold nugget that should have remained in the Inner World was still in his hand.
It was a delightful discovery, because it meant that he had a greater advantage than others when traveling between the Outer World and the Inner World.
He looked down at his arm. The countdown read 168:00:00.
Another seven days.
His last return had come after seven days, and this time he would travel again after another seven days. It seemed Time Walkers were spending longer and longer periods on each side.
How long would it become in the future? Would there come a day when he stayed over there for the rest of his life and never returned?
He did not know.
Qing Chen smiled. Instead of sleeping, he spread a bedsheet on the floor and continued training according to the regimen Ye Wan had taught him.
No one was watching him now, but cultivation was his own affair.
Since he had said he would train until three every day, then he should keep at it even after returning to the Outer World.
He took a deep breath. With that strange breathing rhythm, the Flame Markings on his cheeks bloomed once more!
Whether in the Outer World or the Inner World, self-discipline was the greatest freedom.
Wait, he seemed to have forgotten something important.
After finishing his workout, Qing Chen sat on the floor and drank water, letting sweat drip steadily from his body.
He opened his phone, found a simultaneous translation app, and tried to recall every word Kamishiro Kono had said.
The Japanese sentence she had muttered under her breath had always made Qing Chen feel that it concealed a great deal of information.
It was like... if you traveled somewhere and the locals wanted to curse you out, they would definitely use a dialect you could not understand.
Following his memory, Qing Chen repeated the words into his phone's microphone one by one. "Sitting so quietly seems nice, but this boy's silence is truly beautiful."
Soon, subtitles appeared in the translation app. "Sitting quietly like this seems quite nice too. This boy looks so beautiful when he is silent."
Qing Chen froze. What did she mean by that?
And didn't the Kamishiro Family speak Mandarin too? What was with the Japanese?
Was she a Time Walker from the Outer World? Or had the Kamishiro Family retained its Japanese heritage?
But if she really was a Time Walker, how could she explain speaking such fluent Mandarin? There probably were not many islanders who could speak Mandarin that fluently.
The next morning, Qing Chen had just woken up when he saw WeChat messages flashing nonstop on his phone.
He opened them and found Nan Gengchen had sent: "Qing Chen, Qing Chen, Qing Chen! Do you know how amazing Liu Dezhu from the class next door is?"
Qing Chen was instantly stunned. He sat upright in bed. "What do you mean?"
"Get to school, quick!" Nan Gengchen said.
Qing Chen put on his blue-and-white school uniform and ran for school. Before leaving, he checked himself in the mirror and saw that the aftereffects of fasting had disappeared, only then heading out with peace of mind.
By the time he arrived, the entrance to the neighboring classroom was already packed tight. Dozens of students were gathered outside Class 4, Grade 2, seemingly waiting for something.
"Over here," Nan Gengchen called out, his short figure standing on tiptoe amid the crowd, one arm raised as he tried hard to wave Qing Chen over.
Qing Chen squeezed through and asked quietly, "What happened?"
"Look at the trending searches," Nan Gengchen said, opening Weibo for him.
The moment Qing Chen saw it, he was shocked.
A man surnamed Jian from Chuan Prefecture had traveled to Luo City for work and accidentally become a Time Walker, traveling to Prison No. 18 in the Inner World.
However, his identity as a Time Walker had already been discovered, and he had been detained in a hidden solitary cell.
He traveled for seven days and was imprisoned for seven days.
According to Jian, a Time Walker in Prison No. 18 had already become an influential figure, able to freely enter and leave the cells and even have superhumans serve him.
Jian hoped to find this Time Walker. Negotiation was fine, paying was fine—he only hoped the other party could persuade Prison No. 18 to release him.
Qing Chen was taken aback. He had not expected Jian Sheng to be so bold, directly seeking help from the media and then trying to find him to help him escape.
It seemed being locked in solitary confinement for seven days had really driven him stir-crazy.
Liu Dezhu and Jian Sheng really were unlucky. They had clearly become Time Walkers, yet they had been forcibly locked up.
Other Time Walkers lived colorful lives, admiring the city's holograms and moving through cyberpunk cities. Those two, on the other hand, had just switched locations to serve prison time...
They might as well have stayed put and not traveled at all.
At that moment, Qing Chen suddenly realized why everyone had gathered outside Liu Dezhu's classroom.
Even though Liu Dezhu had not arrived at school yet, everyone was willing to wait.
During the last return, Liu Dezhu had admitted, for the sake of saving face, that he had traveled to Prison No. 18. He had even told everyone that he had spoken with Li Shutong!
When classmates questioned him afterward, Liu Dezhu had only worn a deep and inscrutable expression, refusing to say anything. His meaning was clear: classified, don't ask.
The less he explained, the more people loved to speculate.
Thus, many people believed that Liu Dezhu was about to receive Li Shutong's inheritance and become a Time Walker.
Now that Jian Sheng's situation had come to light, the students who saw the trending Weibo post immediately thought of Liu Dezhu!
Because in everyone's understanding, there were no Time Walkers in Prison No. 18 besides Liu Dezhu!
As the trending topic gradually climbed, a student finally replied in the comments: "My classmate is the Time Walker he mentioned. He's already about to receive Li Shutong's inheritance!"
Jian Sheng's trending topic had originally been only somewhere in the forties, but the instant that comment appeared, it crashed into the top ten within three minutes.
Its popularity was still rising.
In the current public discourse of the Outer World, aside from mysterious figures like He Xiaoxiao, there were not many known superhumans.
And that was Li Shutong—the career path with the highest potential in He Xiaoxiao's guide.
Now, almost everyone who saw the trending topic and commented on it had concluded that Liu Dezhu was the mysterious big shot Jian Sheng had mentioned...
Just as everyone was whispering among themselves, Liu Dezhu came upstairs with his backpack. The moment he turned into the hallway and saw the sea of people before him, his face went pale. "What's going on?"
Everyone was helpless. So the person at the center of it all did not even know what had happened.
"You haven't checked the trending searches? Even if you haven't, at least look at your phone," one student said.
"There's a guy named Jian Sheng. He said he saw you in Prison No. 18 and hopes you can put in a good word with Li Shutong to get him released from solitary confinement."
Liu Dezhu's mind immediately buzzed. He had spent seven days in solitary confinement, and even after returning, he was exhausted from head to toe. He had finally slept in a soft bed, woken up late, and biked all the way to school without checking his phone.
He hurriedly opened it and checked the trending topic.
But the more he read, the more something felt wrong. According to Jian Sheng, that mysterious big shot had visited him alone and asked him several questions.
But that person was not Liu Dezhu.
So, besides himself and Jian Sheng, there was a third Time Walker in Prison No. 18—and that person was the real big shot. He himself was just taking the blame!
I fucking want to beg this big shot too. Can't he get Jian Sheng and me out together?! Liu Dezhu cried inwardly.
At this point, he wanted to deny his identity, because the matter had already blown up.
Liu Dezhu tried to say, "Actually, the person Jian Sheng mentioned isn't me. It's someone else."
One student asked doubtfully, "Yesterday, when we asked whether there were any other travelers in Prison No. 18, you said there weren't."
After traveling for seven days, yesterday in the Outer World was already seven days ago for Liu Dezhu.
Qing Chen silently watched the scene unfold. He thought it was not bad to have someone else draw attention away from him.
Still, it was not a solution for those two to remain locked in solitary confinement for so long. Maybe he could have Li Shutong transfer them to another prison.
At that moment, four news vans drove up outside Luo City Foreign Languages School. After getting out, the reporters rushed toward the school.
The two security guards at the gate tried to stop them, but they could not hold them back at all.
The moment Qing Chen saw this, he immediately grabbed Nan Gengchen and turned back toward their classroom. At a time like this, the most important thing was to stay out of the camera's view.
Time Walkers looked the same in the Outer World and the Inner World. Once they appeared on television, people would remember them.
There's more tonight! It's the first day of May, so please vote with your monthly tickets! I want to make the top ten!
Thanks to Hu Erniu's Big Cutie for becoming this book's Silver Alliance Leader. Boss, you're generous!
Thanks to the Silver Alliance Leaders: Xiaozhubao Yaokaixin, Fuhei Dali, Liuyun Suifeng 1212, Fengxiao, Reader 20210301106583826684, and Hua Bixuan. Thanks, bosses! You're all generous! May you all strike it rich in May!
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