Countdown: 47:59:59.
Two days.
It was still the familiar Prison No. 18.
But this time, it seemed a little different.
No longer was it a cold cell and solitary confinement; someone was waiting for him to return.
Mother Ye held a temperature-controlled lunchbox containing beef she had personally stewed.
The three people across from him watched him as though they were waiting for him to come home.
This home was a little dim and empty, but it was enough.
"Teacher, this is the chess manual I brought for you." Qing Chen opened his palm and handed the USB drive to Li Shutong.
Li Shutong gave it a strange look. "I've never seen this kind of port before. Xiaoxiao, can you handle it?"
Lin Xiaoxiao replied, "No problem. The key to storage devices is the chip."
"Teacher, can you tell if anything changed when I crossed over?" Qing Chen asked. He had previously relied on himself to search for patterns, but now that others had observed him, perhaps they could discover other details.
"You said that one second passed in the other world after you crossed over. That isn't accurate," Li Shutong said. "From what I sensed, there was a change in the force field at the instant you crossed over. That change lasted only a moment, perhaps just 0.1 seconds, or even less. In that instant, you disappeared. When you reappeared, the gold bar in your hand was already gone."
"I see." Qing Chen thought, so I really crossed over physically.
But the question was, where had the original Qing Chen of the Inner World gone? Had he been directly annihilated in that world?
Qing Chen asked, "Teacher, that ball of fiery energy inside my body..."
"It's not yet time to explain," Li Shutong said, shaking his head. "It's just