Revenge

Haicheng Pudong International Airport waiting room.

A boy sat quietly in his seat.

He stared straight ahead, holding a scrambled Rubik's Cube in each hand.

With slender, long fingers moving nimbly, the two scrambled Rubik's Cubes were spinning rapidly, pausing for a second every few seconds before starting to spin again.

Strangely, neither of these Rubik's Cubes has ever been solved.

It's like a complete novice randomly fiddling with a Rubik's Cube; they clearly don't know how to solve it.

At Haicheng Pudong International Airport, amidst the bustling crowds, the young man sat in a state of extraordinary tranquility and solitude.

All the noise and commotion had nothing to do with him...

Not far from the waiting room, a group of young people traveling together to Japan to participate in a Texas Hold'em tournament stopped in their tracks upon seeing this scene.

It's not time to check in yet, so there's no need to rush to board the plane.

"Someone's playing with a Rubik's Cube," a young man laughed.

Everyone followed his gaze to the boy, but after a while, they turned away in boredom. "A newbie."

"Yeah, if you can't solve a 3x3 Rubik's Cube on a SUB-10, you haven't even gotten started. Trying to solve a Rubik's Cube with both hands before you've even mastered one-handed solving is like trying to run before you've even learned to walk," one of them said.

The term SUB-10 refers to solving a Rubik's Cube in under ten seconds, and is considered a professional term for speedcubing.

These people also seemed to play with Rubik's Cubes, but they didn't think much of the boy's speedcubing skills. They were the elite of the college students in Haicheng. This time, they went to Japan to participate in a Texas Hold'em tournament, and then took the opportunity to do a backpacking hike and soak in a hot spring in Takayama Hida.

Takayama Hida is also known as the Northern Alps.

The name is also quite peculiar.

In 1896, British missionary William Weston compared the scenery of the Hida Mountains to the beauty of the European Alps, and the Hida Mountains began to be known as the Island Alps...

Later, the island nation built the Alps National Park directly here.

The other young people found places to sit down.

However, one of the young men kept his eyes fixed on the boy.

He always felt something was off.

"Ren Yan, that's enough, stop looking. It'll embarrass them," someone said.

However, the young man named Ren Yan did not turn his head. He suddenly noticed a problem: although the Rubik's Cube in the boy's hand had never been solved, the frozen image was always the same every time it paused.

Exactly the same.

Moreover, the rhythm with which the boy twisted the Rubik's Cube with one hand was extremely wonderful, like a cyclical melody.

At first, Ren Yan thought that the boy was playing DNF (Dungeon Fighter Online).

The term DNF is also a Rubik's Cube speedcubing term, which means that professional players give up and scramble the Rubik's Cube again when they feel that they cannot solve it within the target time.

But Ren Yan later discovered that it wasn't true.

Just like a normal person playing with a Rubik's Cube, the goal is to make each face the same color, while this boy's goal each time is to solve the same complex pattern.

This behavior is as if the other party is afraid that they are doing something too outrageous, so they want others to think that they are just a novice.

Ren Yan glanced at the digital watch on his wrist and silently started keeping time.

4.983 seconds.

The boy solved the Rubik's Cube with one hand in 4.983 seconds.

If we look at it this way, it's very strange that the boy can solve the Rubik's Cube with one hand in an average of 5 seconds, and that's while he's doing it with both hands at the same time.

It's worth noting that the current world record for one-handed speed twisting is 4.693 seconds.

Ren Yan stared at the boy for a long time.

Then he walked up to the boy and asked curiously, "Have you ever participated in Rubik's Cube competitions? I've never seen you at any Rubik's Cube tournaments. Would you like to participate in a Rubik's Cube competition? I can show you how to register. Let me introduce myself. I am the vice president of the China Speedcubing Association. My name is Ren Yan."

The boy glanced at him expressionlessly, then continued to do as he pleased.

At this moment, Ren Yan suddenly noticed that the boy's hands were covered in frostbite marks. Once those bluish-purple marks formed, they would not disappear until summer.

He didn't know what circumstances could have caused his hands to freeze like that.

"Attention passengers, boarding has begun for flight HO1333 from Haicheng Airport to Osaka Kansai Airport..."

The boy stood up and walked unhurriedly toward the ticket gate, passing through the first-class priority lane.

They completely ignored the young people.

Ren Yan's companion laughed and said, "He's just having some fun, why did you invite him?"

Ren Yan shook his head. "He's not just playing around."

Strangely, why have people who have mastered the Rubik's Cube to this level never participated in a Rubik's Cube competition?

Is it because they disdain participating, or because they are unaware that such a competition exists?

In fact.

Many people practice speedcubing to compete, but not the teenager.

He did this so that he could multitask when killing the gods.

He needs to continuously improve his computational skills, especially his multitasking abilities.

The boy felt that he was still lacking in this area.

Ren Yan looked at the boy's back and felt a little regretful. After all, for many people, Rubik's Cube is just a hobby and can't be used for studying or making a living, so participating in Rubik's Cube competitions doesn't have much meaning.

There's nothing we can do if the other party doesn't want to participate.

As he passed through the ticket gate, the boy in first class continued playing with his Rubik's Cube. There weren't many people in first class; besides him, there was only one middle-aged man.

As Ren Yan boarded the plane, he happened to see the boy still quietly playing with a Rubik's Cube.

It was as if the boy had no other entertainment activities, or even any emotions.

He didn't know why, but he always felt that the boy was strange, but he couldn't put his finger on what was strange about him.

Once the plane enters the stratosphere, the flight attendants serve the meal.

Another middle-aged man in first class took two bites and then stopped, seemingly because the food wasn't very good.

However, the boy ate bite by bite, finishing every single grain of rice in the bowl, and also ate all the fruit and snacks.

When the flight attendant saw this scene, she felt that the boy seemed to have obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating with exceptional seriousness and appreciation.

Only the boy himself knew the price someone had paid to give him food, and how precious the opportunity to eat normal food was.

So from now on, he will eat every bite of food carefully and not waste a single bit.

Two hours later, the plane landed.

Passengers walked out of the plane and through the long and complicated Osaka customs.

However, just as he stepped out of the airport, the boy reached out and plucked a hair from the back of the head of a middle-aged man who was also a first-class passenger.

Then, using two fingers to gently insert the hair into the middle-aged man's spleen, stir it, and then pull it out.

It was done casually and without fanfare.

The boy let go, threw the hair on the ground, and continued walking forward.

Everything happened too fast. The middle-aged man only felt a pain in the back of his head, followed by a piercing pain in his waist. The internal bleeding wound caused him to kneel on the ground, and his strength was rapidly draining away.

Life is the same.

Someone went to call the airport ground staff, but when the staff arrived, they found that the middle-aged man was already dead.

His heartbeat and breathing had completely stopped.

The passengers behind were somewhat confused, thinking that the middle-aged man had suffered a heart attack and had collapsed.

But soon, someone discovered that this was not the case. Blood was constantly seeping from the small holes in the middle-aged man's lower back, soaking his clothes.

Airport ground staff shouted, "Murder! Seal off the scene! Call the Osaka Prefectural Police Headquarters immediately! No one is allowed to leave! Go and retrieve the CCTV footage!"

The passengers behind stared wide-eyed. How could a perfectly good trip suddenly turn into a crime scene?!

One passenger said, "We haven't broken any laws, so why are you restricting our freedom? I remember him; he was a first-class passenger on flight HO1333 and got off the plane before us. You should be looking for someone who got off the plane with him."

However, at that moment, Ren Yan suddenly looked around for the boy in the crowd, only to find that the boy had already disappeared.

Ren Yan had no evidence, but he was certain that the boy had done it.

Only at this moment did he understand why he found the boy strange; it was because the boy's eyes were too calm, so calm that they seemed devoid of any emotion.

Police arrived and reviewed the surveillance footage, which showed the teenager pulling out hair to kill someone.

No wonder the murder weapon couldn't be found in the airport; it turns out the perpetrator used hair as the weapon, and the diameter of the victim's wounds perfectly matched the thickness of a hair.

Inside the airport, everyone has to go through security checks several times. If someone were carrying a weapon, it would have been detected long ago.

However, normal people would never imagine that hair could kill.

This hair was plucked directly from a middle-aged man's head.

The police officers looked at each other in bewilderment. It was a murder case Time Walker, and only Time Walker could possess such a bizarre ability!

One of the officers said in a low voice, "Notify the Mysterious Affairs Department that we are not authorized to interfere in this matter."

The Mysterious Affairs Department is a department that emerged after the time travel incident began, specifically to deal with Time Walker.

Everyone inside is Time Walker controlled by the Kamishiro Corporation, serving the will of the Kamishiro Corporation. They wield immense power and can even influence the political situation of the island nation in the Outer World.

The boy was Qing Chen, and the person he killed was a Time Walker from the Mysterious Affairs Department.

The secret liaison unit responsible for communication with the Time Walker of Gods within China has chosen to withdraw due to the tense situation.

Unexpectedly, even after retreating to the island nation's mainland, they were still killed.

At this moment, Qing Chen had no distracting thoughts.

He only had two things on his mind: revenge and Life and Death Trial.

The A02 Secret Military Base is a very mysterious entity throughout the Federation. It is one of the largest training bases for intelligence personnel of the God Era, and is as infamous as the legendary Siberian devil's training camp.

But Qing Chen obtained far more information from Takahashi Tōju and Zhao Shuai's memories than that.

Because these two had personally trained a group of male Time Walker while at the A02 Secret Military Base.

Those Time Walker who are discovered in the northern cities will also be sent to the secret military bases A01, A02, and A03 for two months of brutal training.

On one hand, it was to enhance the combat capabilities of the Time Walker, and on the other hand, it was to brainwash them and make them identify with the Time Walker Kamishiro Corporation.

When Qing Chen was imprisoned in Military Base A02, the second cohort of Time Walker had just graduated. The 300 members completed their "graduation ceremony" by hunting down 496 prisoners, and then returned to City 22 in the north.

Each batch of nearly a thousand Time Walker undergoes the most brutal combat training, then graduates in batches, forming a large organization of thousands to help the Age of Gods complete its control over the island nation on the Outer World.

And they searched for the remaining undiscovered Time Walker.

Under the previous planning of Li Ji Guanya and Qing Si Nianhua, they carried out a perfectly executed plan to replace the island nation.

Despite their thorough preparations, after causing minor damage, they were forced to retreat by the Time Walker of Gods organization.

It's not that Ji Guanya and Si Nianhua aren't capable, but rather, this is, after all, the home ground of the Divine Era. The fact that they were able to sneak over and cause so much trouble is beyond imagination.

During this trip to the island nation, Qing Chen did not seek help from Kunlun or Jiuzhou. Ji Guanya and Si Nianhua could provide for him was enough.

Just as the Time Walker from the Mysterious Affairs Department were swarming in, the entrance to Osaka Kansai Airport was already completely blocked.

The sniper rifle fired, and a section chief from a Mysterious Affairs Department fell to the ground.

Only then did everyone realize that the killer had not gone far.

There will be one more chapter before midnight.